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THE LIFE POWER

. . AND . .

HOW TO USE IT.

BY ELIZABETH TOWNE.

The cloud-maker tells us the world is wrong,

And is bound in an evil fetter,
But the blue-sky man comes bringing a song

Of hope that shall make it better;
And the toilers, hearing his voice, behold

The sign of a glad to-morrow,
Whose hands are heaped with the purest gold,

Of which each heart ma.y borrow.

— Nixon Waterman.

PRICE, Sl.OO.

PUBLISHED BY

ELIZABETH TOWNE, HOLYOKE, MASS.

"X

1*

LIB8ARY of CONGRESS
Two Copies Received

MAR 141906

'(] Copyright Entry .
^tiASS,£t XXe. No,
COPY B.

COPYRIGHT, JANUARY, 1906,

BY

ELIZABETH TOWNE.

TO WILLIAM E. TOWNE,

WHO HAS HELPED ME

TO KNOW THE TRUTH.

I DEDICATE THESE PACES.

The truth is large; no man hath seen the whole;

Larger than words; it brooks not the control

Of argument and of distinctions nice;

No age or creed can hold it, no device

Of speech or language; ay, no syllogism;

Truth is the sun, and reason is the prism

You lift before it; whence the light is thrown

In various colors; each man takes his own.

If this man takes the red as you the blue,

Is yours the whole? and is his truth not true?

Spirit is truth, how e'er the colors fall;

The fact comes back to spirit, after all.

— Samuel Valentine Cole.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

1. Methuselah and the Sun 7

2. Three-Fold Being 13

3. Soul, Mind, and Body 19

4. How to Aim 25

5. The Substance of Things 37

6. To Get at the Substance 47

7. The Spirit and the Individual 53

8. By Crooked Paths 61

9. Spirit the Breath of Life 69

10. Affirmations and Wheels 73

11. Your Forces and How to Manage Them 83

12. Duty and Love 87

13. Well Done 97

14. What Has He Done? 107

15. Will and Wills 113

16. Concerning Vibrations 125

17. The I Was and the I Am 131

18. Immortal Thought 139

19. God in Person 145

20. How to Peach Heaven 151

21. A Look at Heredity 159

22. Critic and Criticised 167

23. The Nobility 173

To see the beauty of the world, and hear

The rising harmony of growth, whose shade

Of undertone is harmonized decay;

To know that love is life — that blood is one

And rushes to the union — that the heart

Is like a cup athirst for wine of love;

Who sees and feels this meaning utterly,

The wrong of law, the right of man, the natural truth,

Partaking not of selfish aims, withholding not

The word that strengthens and the hand that helps!

Who wants and sympathizes with the pettiest life,

And loves all things,

And, reaches up to God

With thanks and blessing —

He alone is living.

— John Boyle O'Reilly,

Methuselah and The Suit.

The sun gives forth to us heat and light rays, with-
out which this old world could never be. Glory to
warmth and light, which are power and wisdom shed
upon us.

But there is likewise a third kind of ray shed by old
Sol, whose mission we may not so readily bless. The
sun's actinic rays are death-dealing. They cause disin-
tegration, decomposition.

There are people who declare that time was when a
great canopy of vapor hung over the earth and revolved
with it, as Jupiter's vapory canopies now do; and that
this vapory canopy kept off almost completely the ac-
tinic rays, while it admitted light and heat rays. Thus
they account for Adam's and Methuselah's great ages.
And they say that, unless this vapory canopy is again
formed around our earth, to ward off these death-
dealing rays, we shall never attain immortality in
the flesh. They claim that as heat and light rays are
power and wisdom, so the actinic rays are the Devil
of the Bible, the Destroyer. And they believe that be-

7

fore man can be saved the Destroyer must be cast into
outer darkness — shut out by that sheltering canopy of
vapor.

An interesting and apparently plausible theory, is it
not? But there are facts yet to be reckoned with. It
is true that if a great watery veil spread itself over the
earth to-day there might be no more death.

But neither could there be growth. Every form of
life would continue as it is, wrinkles, gray hair and all.
Why? Because there must be dissolution of old forms
before there can be new ones made with that material.
Take a photo plate as an instance: Here is a glass
surface covered with a delicate gelatine; expose it in a
dark-room under a red light and you can see just what
it looks like; hold it there as long as you please and it
still looks the same.

Now shut it into the black camera and sally forth on
pleasure bent. The delicate film is undisturbed. But
you come to a beautiful bit of woodland you want to
"snap." You turn your focus upon it, and one little
snap of a second's duration transforms that gelatine
surface. Just for one instant of time you let in those
actinic rays, and then all was darkness again inside
the camera.

Now back you go into the dark-room and turn up the
red light, by which you see again your beautiful bit of

woodland, reproduced on that delicate gelatine surface.
If you let in a bit of daylight your picture would be gone
in a wink — the delicate gelatine would be "pied" in an
attempt to reproduce whatever it faced. But you don't
let in the light of day; you "fix" your bit of beautiful
woodland by dipping the plate in a solution which
hardens the particles of gelatine to the glass.

Henceforth the light cannot affect that gelatine; the
picture you have, but life, progress, change, possibilities,
are gone from the delicate gelatine forever.

But if you could live forever under a red light you
would not need to "fix" your negative ; it would forever
retain that picture. And if you continued to live under
the red light you might as well throw away your camera
and plates — you could never take another picture. And
you wouldn't need such amusement either — not for
long. A few days in the red light and you would be sick,
and a few more days and you would go mad. Finally
nature would "fix" you, and there would be no more
change. (I wonder if scientists have ever tried keep-
ing a dead form hermetically sealed under red glass.
The cutting off of the actinic rays ought to arrest de-
cay and facial change.)

You see, the actinic rays, the devil or destroying rays
of the sun, are absolutely essential to all change in the
photo plate. Probably the actinic rays soften and sepa-

9

rate the atoms of the gelatine, which are immediately
polarized into the form of the scene it faces in the light
and heat rays. Without the softening action of the
actinic rays the gelatine could not take the form of the
scene it faces; and without the light and heat rays it
could not "see" and "feel" the scene, even if the actinic
rays were present. It takes the trinity of rays, light,
heat and actinic, to produce a photograph negative.

It is said that all inventions are but clumsy copies
of mechanisms found in the human body and brain;
that man contains on a microscopic scale all the inven-
tions ever thought of, or that ever will be thought of.
This is another way of saying that man is the micro-
cosm, the universe the macrocosm. Victor Hugo ex-
presses the same truth when he says "man is an in-
finite little copy of God."

The entire photographing process goes on in body
and brain. Not a thought or sight but is photographed
upon some tiny cell. Not a cell but may be cleaned of
that impression, resensitized and given another impres-
sion.

Perhaps cells are immortal, as science claims. If
so every cell must have undergone this cleaning, resen-
sitizing and re-photographing process countless billions
of times— with countless possibilities ahead.

And in every one of these picturings and repicturings
10

the actinic rays are utterly indispensable. So, I can-
not believe that the immortality of anything but a
marble statue is dependent upon the cutting off of
the sun's actinic rays. To be sure the actinic rays
cause dissolution; but dissolution merely precedes re-
solution; dissolution gives light and heat (wisdom and
love-power) a chance to produce yet higher forms.
Blessed be the destroying rays — blessed be nature's
Devil; for he but clears the way for God himself, and
cleans up and rearranges the rubbish after God has
passed.

But when the race was in its childhood it looked upon
the work done by these actinic rays, and fear was born.
It saw things die; it saw destruction in the path of the
wind; and like any child it imagined evil things. It
personified the destroying power as Diablos, the Devil —
which means destroyer.

It saw also the building, growing principle in nature
and imagined a Builder.

But being a child it drew the childish conclusion that
Destroyer and Builder worked eternally against each
other, that they were enemies.

You see that was before the race had conceived the
idea that two could work together; it was every
man-savage for himself and the devil take the hind-
most.

11

So the baby race began to love the Builder, God, and
dislike and fear the Destroyer; and in its ignorance it
personified both.

But here and there a clear-seer arose who glimpsed
the truth. God spoke through Isaiah saying, "Behold,
I make peace and I create evil; I, the Lord, do all
these things." Solomon said the Lord "creates evil for
the day of evil." And every seer of every Bible has tried
to make clear the oneness, the all-wisdom all-power,
all-presence of God.

All life is one. The sun is God manifest. The De-
stroyer belongs to the trinity and can no more be dis-
pensed with than can the other two members, wisdom
and love-power. And you may rest assured the De-
stroyer touches only that which needs dissolution that
it may be transmuted.

Has anything gone out of your life? Have you lost
that which you esteemed dear? Grieve not. It has
been destroyed or taken away to make place for yet
higher things.

God gives and God takes away in answer to your
own highest desires. The Destroyer is but cleaning the
plate for a more beautiful picture.

Be still and know that all things are working for
the manifestation of your deepest desires. Work with
things, not against them.

12

II.

Three-Fold Being.

Man is a three-strata being, instead of a two-strata
one as Thomson J. Hudson theorizes. The obvious
stratum is commonly called conscious or objective mind.
This is the surface mind, the everyday mind, the mind
we use in our waking hours.

Then there is the sub-conscious mind. The sub-
conscious or subjective mind is the stratum of mind
which receives the knowledge and wisdom which has
passed through the conscious mind. The sub-conscious
stratum of mind holds the habits and instincts formed
at some time and place in and by the conscious mind.
"Sub" means under; the sub-conscious mind lies under
the conscious mind, as the depths of the lake lie under
the surface.

But there is a third layer of mind which lies within
and beyond both conscious and sub-conscious mind, and
whose workings Hudson confounds writh those of the
sub-conscious mind. This may be called, for the lack
of a better name, the super-conscious mind — the mind
above conscious mind — the mind above consciousness,

13

This super-conscious mind is what we call God, out of
which comes all wisdom.

Conscious mind is the point of contact between what
we have already learned in this and previous states of
existence, and the limitless reservoir of truth yet to be
learned. Conscious mind is like unto the surface of
a lake; sub-conscious mind is like the depths of the
lake, every drop of which has at some time been on the
surface, and is liable at any time to be recalled there;
but super-conscious mind is like the rains of heaven and
the streams from snow clad heights, whence the lake is
perpetually replenished.

That which we already know, which we do by in-
stinct, rests in the sub-conscious mind, ever ready to
be recalled to the conscious mind. The conscious mind
has to do with that which we are now learning. Super-
conscious mind contains all wisdom, knowledge and
power. In it we live and move and have our being and
from it we are able to call, by aspiration and inspira-
tion, whatsoever we would know.

The visible universe as it is, is the sub-conscious and
conscious mind of God; it represents what has been
thought out of the universal reservoir of truth. But
it is only a taste of the wonderful supplies still await-
ing our aspiration and inspiration.

Think of all the wonderful discoveries and inven-
14

tions of the last sixty years— all thought out of that
great -universal reservoir; and eye hath not seen nor
ear heard the glories that yet await us in the great super-
conscious realm.

Mrs. Boehme illustrates individuality and solidarity
by a star-shaped diagram. Each point of the star rep-
resents a person, a formed character; in other words,
it represents the sub-conscious or habit self, the "nature"
of the person. The center of the star represents God,
the universal mind, with which every person is one on
the unseen side. Looking at the points alone there is
diversity, separateness ; but looking from the center out-
ward toward the points we see that points and center
are all one, with no separating lines.

Now imagine a line cutting each point off from the
center — an imaginary line, not a real one — and you
will have a fair illustration of the conscious mind. The
conscious mind lies between the personality and the
universality of each of us ; between the human and the
divine of each; between what has been realized, and
that limitless reservoir of beauties waiting to be real-
ized.

Look at the star from the center and you will see
that each point is simply a little bay projecting outward
from the center ; so each individuality is an inlet of God,
each individual mind an inlet of divine mind.

15

And conscious mind is the imaginary line where
personal mind and divine mind meet. You can readily
see that one's conscious mind, then, would be filled with
personality or divinity according as he looks down
and is occupied with the "physical" being, or looks up
and aspires toward the universal part of himself, the
God part.

Now imagine the center of the star as being fluid,
ever living and always free; and think of the points as
being nearly solid, partially fixed. Imagine the points
as containing water of life so muddy with false beliefs
that it continually deposits along its edges layers of
mud, ever hardening; with the water growing thicker
and the beaches ever widening. Thus will you per-
ceive the difference between personality and univer-
sality.

Now imagine the conscious mind endowed with will;
note that when it turns toward the point of the star,
toward the "material" part of itself, it becomes tense
with anxiety and thus shuts off the point from the cen-
ter, preventing a free play of the currents of life through
the star-point, the personality. So the personality
dries up, literally. This is the process by which
we grow old.

Then imagine the conscious mind turned in faith
and love toward the center of life — think, with this

16

broader vision and knowledge of life, how lightly it
would hold the things of personality, of that little point
of personality; knowing that the personality is only
a little inlet of divinity, and that the broad opening
between the two is always open, that personality exists
as a result of ever-flowing currents of divinity, and
that only his own grasping and straining can hinder
the currents; — knowing all this, conscious mind turns
away from the already realized personality and throws
wide the opening into the great center of all life. Thus
conscious mind looks up, not down ; and comes into his
kingdom of love, wisdom, power. This is inspiration
and aspiration. Yes, you may receive what you will,
provided you call upon the super-conscious mind, the
One mind over all. Whatsoever you can ask this mind
believing you receive, you shall have.

When you can't ask in faith it is usually because you
have not dwelt enough with the thought of God, the
divine self of all creation. When we dwell much in
the thought of personality, things, "materiality," then
God seems faint and far away and impotent, and we
can't believe we shall receive what we ask.

We need daily periods for withdrawing from the
physical life and dwelling upon the thought of our one-
ness with omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and
our oneness with each other. Thus does faith grow,

17

aspiration and inspiration become our mental habit,
and the waters of life flow freely through us.

The One Spirit will guide you in all the affairs of
life, and you are "safe" only when following its prompt-
ings.

If you would know the spirit's leadings measure your
impulses by the golden rule; for the spirit is Love to
All.

18

III.

Soul, Mind, and Body.

If there is an individual soul that leaves the body at
death, as most of us suppose, then this individual soul
must be an organization of cell souls, just as the body-
is an organization of cells.

The body is referred to as the "shell," the "husk,"
the "house we live in," the "temple." In leaving the
body, then, only the coarser elements are sloughed
off and left as "dead," while the soul of every
cell ascends, still organized in the individual soul; and
the body cells disintegrate because the soul no longer
holds them together.

This agrees with the statement of Theosophy that
there is an "astral body" within the material body,
which is like the material body but more beautiful.
Many persons claim to have seen this astral body leave
its "temple." Perhaps Paul meant this when he spoke
of two bodies.

It seems reasonable to suppose that this spiritual
body carries within it all knowledge gained in this state
of being, and that in a new incarnation the older expe-

19

riences are "forgotten," just as a thousand things are
forgotten every day of our lives — things which at some
future time we may recall. The thing was there, in
our sub-consciousness, all the time; it simply did not
affect us strongly enough to make us think about it.
A child's interest in this incarnation keeps in the
background of sub-consciousness its memories of past
lives. If it wanted to hard enough, and thought
about it enough, it could recall incidents in pre-
vious states of existence just as it can recall an
incident of yesterday or last year which it has tempo-
rarily forgotten.

Many people claim to have recalled past states of
existence by desire and concentration, and many claim
to have flashes of remembrance without any special
desire or intention. And the Society for Psychical Re-
search has on record many strange cases of dual or
many-sided personality, etc., which seem to confirm this
conception of soul and body.

It seems to me that the soul is the naked life force
which is one with spirit; that material experiences are
the matrices by which the life force, or soul force, is
formed and organized into individuality; and that we
shed the "material" parts of the body as fast as we
can — just as in the lower forms of life shells are dis-
carded when backbones appear ; the shell protecting and

20

moulding the life-form until it is sufficiently formed
and organized to do without the shell.

When the physical body becomes too stiff and un-
yielding a form for the growing mind or soul, then it
is discarded. x4nd it looks as if the soul, through growth
and attraction, steps into a new incarnation where the
material at hand will afford it a better matrix.

As long as the body is alive and yielding, responding
readily to the developing organization of the individual,
the soul keeps changing in its matrix, its body, day by
day as needed ; but a stiff, too-rigid and old-style matrix
or body has to be discarded in whole, for a new one.
"From the soul the bodye forme doth take," and when
the body becomes inadequate to express the soul growth
it is sloughed off altogether.

The body, astral and material, is the storage of the
past experiences and the wisdom organized through
those experiences.

The "objective mind," in the brain, is the surface of
this storage, the doorway by which all this wisdom and
knowledge entered into individual organization. The
brain is the switchboard by which we are able to use
this store of wisdom and knowledge at will.

The "objective mind" governs and directs not only
the switchboard, but all the sub-stores with which it
connects.

21

The "objective mind" also connects with the univer-
sal storehouse of wisdom, upon which it draws by what
we call "intuition." It is through this connection with
the universal that we are enabled to "rise higher than
our source" of sub-conscious wisdom and knowledge
gained in previous incarnations. In order to grow we
need the super-conscious wisdom which is All.

Just as by desire and concentration we can recall the
knowledge and wisdom gained in previous incarnations,
so by desire and concentration directed toward the Uni-
versal, the Infinite, we call to us yet greater wisdom and
knowledge than any yet realized.

The body which disintegrates after death is a mere
collection of cell-cocoons from which the organized cell-
souls have flown to new states of being. With its soul
the body loses its feeling, the atoms disintegrating, each
becoming what it was before, simply a bit of "dead
matter" which is not dead at all.

The atoms of matter are just the same after death
as before; but the organizing and informing spirit and
soul, spirit or soul (for there is no dividing line between
them), has departed, leaving each atom to live its little
life again without relation to other atoms. Without
this organizing spirit to draw and hold the atoms to-
gether they fall apart — "ashes to ashes."

The cell is the unit organization of the body, each cell

clothed with many atoms. The soul of the cell leaves
it, just as the soul leaves the body as a whole.

That the astral body is an organization of cell souls,
just as the physical body is an organization of cells, I
have no present doubt.

And it looks reasonable to me to suppose that the
soul, or astral body, carries within it all the records of
all the individual's experiences since the beginning of
time. That with every incarnation and experience this
astral grows in wisdom and knowledge and beauty of
character, I see no reason to doubt.

And by the power of universal attraction it is drawn
in each reincarnation, to the exact parentage and con-
dition it needs to help its growth in grace.

23

To Life, the force behind the Man, intellect is a neces-
sity, because without it he blunders into death. Just
as Life, after ages of struggle, evolved that wonderful
bodily organ, the eye, so that the living organism could
see where it was going and what was coming to help or
threaten it, and thus avoid a thousand dangers that for-
merly slew it, so it is evolving to-day a mind's eye that
shall see, not the physical world, but the purpose of
Life, and thereby enable the individual to work for that
purpose instead of thwarting and baffling it by setting
up shortsighted personal aims as at present. Even as
it is, only one sort of man has ever been happy, has ever
been universally respected among all the conflicts of
interests and illusions. * * * I sing, not arms and
the hero, but the philosophic man; he ivho seeks in con-
templation to discover the inner will of the world, in
invention to discover the means of fulfilling that will,
and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means.

— Bernard Shaw.

24

IV.
How To Aim.

Without definiteness of aim nothing can be accom-
plished.

With too definite an aim very little can be accom-
plished.

This is the paradox of all accomplishment. It looks
hard, but is in reality very easy — so easy that a child
lives it.

The key to the problem is this : No man liveth unto
himself and none dieth unto himself; we are all mem-
bers one of another; all creation moves to "one far-off
divine event," the definite details of which no human
being has yet grasped. Perhaps none ever will grasp
it. For how can the hand or the foot conceive the
structure and purposes of the whole body?

There is a Universal Aim which includes and impels
all individual aims. There is one great intelligence,
one spirit, one purpose actuating every human being.
The "Plan of Salvation" is not a mere superstitious
myth. There certainly is a "plan," a "divine event,"
which we are all working at, whether we know it or not.

25

There is a Divine Ideal beckoning us every one.
Glimpses of it are caught even by the fool who hath
said in his heart there is no God, no oneness of life and
purpose.

As our bodies are all members of God's body, so our
ideals are members of the Universal Ideal ; our aims are
members of the Universal Aim.

Your hand may understand and define its impulse
to grasp or release; but can it understand and define
your aim and purpose, which gave it the impulse?
We can imagine the hand understanding its own move-
ments ; but can it understand your movements and pur-
poses? The hand says, "I want to grasp this"; but
can it in any sense understand your purpose, which
made it want to grasp ?

So you say, "I want to paint pictures," or "I want
to make money," or "I want to teach school," or "I
want to be a home-keeper and mother," or "I want to
build bridges." But can you tell why you want to do
these things or others? Can you define the Great I
WANT of which your I want is but an outcropping?
Can you see the Universal Ideal of which your ideal
is a detail? No; you can see your individual I want,
but the Universal I WANT is too large for you to take
in from your point of view.

Did you ever say to yourself, "I want to be a bridge
26

buiider" ; then after you had become a successful bridge
builder did you find yourself rather disgusted with the
bridge business? Did you find yourself saying, "I
want to be a painter instead of a bridge builder" ? And
you could n't imagine why your wants wouldn't stay
satisfied with bridge building.

Can you imagine the hand being disgusted because
after it had grasped the book awhile it found itself
wanting to let go? Of course. The hand would
not understand why it could not remain "constant"
to its first desire: it would not see the reason for
letting go.

So with us members of the "Stupendous Whole."
Universal purpose and desire play through us. We
know we "want" this and we "don't want" that. When
we are on the "animal" plane we simply gratify our
wants when we can, and are satisfied until another
want impels us. By and by we begin to reason about
our wants. We call some of them "good," and gratify
them if we can. We call some of them "bad" and fight
them with all our puny might — and are correspond-
ingly unhappy. In both cases we fail to see why we
want what we want.

When after we have learned to build bridges we find
ourselves wanting to paint pictures we resist the desire
and keep on building bridges. Then, if the Universal

27

Purpose really wants us to stop building bridges and
make pictures it keeps on impelling us in the new
direction until we finally find a way to get at the paint-
ing. If we are too stubborn the Universal I WANT gets
us out of the way and raises up our sons and daughters
to paint the pictures.

It is like this : In response to the Universal I WANT
you have taught your good right hand to thread needles
and sew, until it can almost do it in the dark. All
the nerves and brains and muscles in your finger tips
have learned that little trick. Now, in response to a
new Universal I WANT, you decide that that good right
hand of yours is to learn to run scales on the piano.
You sit down at the piano, place your hand in position
and impel it to strike the notes. But this sort of thing
is entirely new to. your fingers! Every little muscle is
stiff, every nerve and every tiny bit of finger-brain pro-
tests that it can't run scales ! — it does n't know how ! —
its work is sewing — it can't, so there ! You say to
yourself, "How stiff my fingers are, and how rebellious
— they won't mind me at all I" But you keep on send-
ing your want, your will into them. You "practice"
long hours every day. And by and by you find your
fingers have learned the new trick and can do it with-
out special thought and will from you. You kept pour-
ing your want into that hand until it became the hand's

28

want and will. From working against your want the
hand has come to work with it and by it.

Why did you do it ? Because the Universal I WANT
kept pouring itself into you until you took up the prac-
tice; just as you poured the I WA5TT on into your
hands until they, too, wanted to do it, and did it.

Were your fingers extra rebellious? Did they fight,
and get tangled up, and imitate each other's move-
ments ? Then what did you do with them ? You kepi
them at it; and you kept them at it a great deal
longer time than you would if they had been more obe-
dient fingers; you kept them practicing until they
learned to do the work willingly, with interest, artis-
tically. Then you gave them beautiful things to play
with, instead of hard things to work at.

Of course the beautiful things to play with are all
made up of the very same sort of things your fingers
have been working hard at. But the monotony of repe-
tition is all gone from the beautiful play. It is joy to
play. It is "hard work" to practice scales.

But without all those scales there can never be a sat-
isfying play. In practice we learn by repetition to do
well and gracefully one thing at a time. In play we
string all these movements together in a satisfying play
of joy and praise.

We hope for the perfection of action which alone
29

makes satisfying play possible; therefore we keep prac-
ticing. The harder our fingers rebel the longer and
more persistently we keep them at it — that is all.

Now the Universal I WANT keeps us at things in
precisely the same way. The Universal is working out a
glorious Ideal of perfect play, wherein every member
of itself shall be shining, obedient, supple enough to
play with grace and full joy the "music of the
spheres." You and I being more or less stiff and dis-
obedient and dense have to be kept at our practices
until we learn to do them right. We say, "Oh, if I
could only get into my right niche; but I seem to be
held here in spite of all I can do !" We say we "don't
like" the sort of "drudgery" we are "condemned" to —
there must be something "wrong" with the universe,
or with economic or family conditions, or we would not
have to drudge at one kind of thing when we are "fitted"
for something else, or want to do something else.

Our fingers cry out in the same way when we keep
them at the scales— -"Oh," they cry, "why are we com-
pelled to this dreary commonplace repetition when our
souls long for beautiful harmonies?"

You see, it never occurs to them that they are "com-
pelled" to this commonplace scale practice because
they long for beautiful harmonies and happy play.
And it doesn't occur readily to you and to me that

30

we are held to our dish washing, our business routine,
our bridge building because our souls long for greater
things.

But it is so. The perfection of large ideals can never
be attained except through perfection of detail; and
through the dish washing, business routine, bridge
building, we are perfecting the details of self-command,
of body and brain control which will enable us to play
the great harmonies our souls already feel.

The great things we feel and desire without being
able to express them, comprise the Universal Ideal at
which every soul is aiming, whether or not he knows it.
The perfection of this great Ideal we see as through
smoked glass, darkly. We get all sorts of half-views
of it, and spend a lot of time squabbling about it. But
not one of us really knows even a tiny part of the glory
and beauty and joy of that Universal Ideal, which in-
cludes and actuates all our personal ideals. "It doth
not yet appear what we shall be." But we know that
when the Great Ideal does appear we shall all have our
places in the joy of its beauty, for every one of us will
have had his place and done his part in working out
that ideal.

The Universal Ideal is gently urging us on to in-
effable good. But none of us can conceive the details
of the good which is yet to appear. We are all hoping

31

and working for this "Indeterminate Good," as Han-
ford Henderson calls it. It constitutes our large Ideal,
which includes all our lesser, fleeting ideals and even
our passing wishes and longings.

It is with our large ideals that definiteness of aim is
a mistake. An "indeterminate good" necessitates a
general aim. It will not do to say "I know exactly
where the blossoms will appear when the earth blos-
soms as a rose, and I know exactly the day they will
appear; therefore will I till only those exact spots and
get my ascension robes ready for that exact hour." The
man who is so dead sure of his great aim will sooner or
later, like "Perkins" in "Quincy Adams Sawyer," find
himself perched on the ridgepole with his white robes
flapping in the cold night and his goods in somebody's
else possession. When one is too sure of the "far-off
divine event" he muddles the present opportunity for
hastening that event.

"Wisdom is before him that hath understanding; but
the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth." The
man who is too sure of the "indeterminate good" misses
the present good. The man who aims at the Great
Good which he cannot hit, misses the little Goods, near
at hand, which need to be hit.

What should we think of a hunter who aimed only
at big game beyond his gun's reach, while small game

32

gamboled at his feet ? We 'd think him a fool who de-
served to starve to death. Of course.

We miss our chances by straining after the big game
beyond our reach.

The great ideal should have our faith, rather than
our aim.

Aim only at that which is within reach, and trust the
big things to time and the spirit.

You stand in the Now. Keep your aim for the things
of the Now. Thus will your aim gain accuracy and
you will be ready for the Great Things when they shall
at last appear in the Now.

Where are you Now? Are you building bridges?
Then aim to build this one better than any other was
ever built. Aim to improve your work now.

Aim to enjoy it all; for only as joy brightens you can
you see how to better* your work and methods.

And proficiency at bridge building means freedom to
follow your next ideal. The greater your proficiency
the nearer the top you get, and the more money you get
for your work; and the more money you have the more
time you can take for working out your next ideal.

In proportion as you are progressively proficient at
your work your money stream will increase. In propor-
tion as you enjoy your work you will grow in efficiency
and money. The drudge is held to his work because he

33

does not put into it the love and interest and joy neces-
sary to make him progressively proficient.

He says "lack of money keeps him from getting into
a new line of work." That is it exactly — the Universal
Spirit which urges us on keeps the money away from
us until we have gained in this thing the proficiency
needed to fit us for other work.

Are you building bridges and at the same time aim-
ing to paint pictures? And are you too poor to drop
the bridge building and devote all your time to paint-
ing pictures ? Then I say unto you have faith in your
desire to paint pictures, for your desire is an outcrop-
ping of Universal Desire and is certain to find its sat-
isfaction. Your desire is the desire of Omnipotence,
Omniscience, which will in no wise disappoint itself.
All desires shall be fulfilled in the fullness of time.

Would you hasten the time? Then have faith in
your desire; but aim at the bridge building. Do better
and better the work you find to do until the way opens
to a new line of work.

And do every detail of your bridge building as if it
were the painting of the greatest picture. Think you
that accuracy of observation, delicacy of touch, har-
mony of thought and power of expression are gained
only by dabbling paint on a canvas with a camers-hair
brush? No. Bridge building has its place in training

34

a great painter. Put your soul into it while you are
held to it, and give it its full chance to do the work.

Have faith in your desire to paint pictures, but aim
your energies at the bridge you are building now. Keep
your faith high, your aim true, and verily in an hour
when you least expect it the way will open from bridge
building to picture painting.

35

Where are the cowards who bow down to environment —

Who think they are made of what they eat, and must
conform to the bed that they lie in?

I am not wax, — I am energy!

Like the whirlwind and waterspout, I twist my envi-
ronment into my form, whether it will or not.

What is it that transmutes electricity into auroras, and
sunlight into rainbows, and soft flakes of snow into
stars, and adamant into crystals, and makes solar
systems of nebulae?

Whatever it is, I am its cousin- ger man K

I, too, have my ideas to work out, and the universe is
given me for raw material.

I am a signet, and I will put my stamp upon the molten
stuff before it hardens.

What allegiance do I owe to environment? I shed
environments for others as a snake sheds its skin.

The world must come my way, — slowly, if it will, — but
still my way.

I am a vortex launched in chaos to suck it into shape.

— Ernest Crosby.

36

The Substance of Things,

"To a certain extent I have been benefited by these teach-
ings. In some ways they do not appear to have a very practical
result. It is possible to concentrate and obtain small things, but
any real change of surroundings seems to be quite dependent
upon circumstances entirely outside my own will;" H. B.

Thus writes a shortsighted and faithless one — faith-
less because of her shortsightedness. Another woman
who has observed the same things writes thus: "If I
see no great results now / know it is because I am work-
ing for large things."

Life "concentrates" on a mushroom and grows it in
a night; but an oak requires twenty years of "concen-
tration." A woman "concentrates" on a good dinner,
a bit of sewing, the control of her tongue for an hour,
$5.00 for a new hat, the cure of a headache, and suc-
cess crowns each effort. These are little things, the
mushrooms of an hour, used shortly and soon forgotten.

The same woman "concentrates" for a complete
change in disposition or environment, for anything in
fact which seems a long way off from present conditions.
iSTow if she is a shortsighted woman she has little or

37

no faith in anything which she cannot see, hear, taste,
smell or feel. She can see, taste and smell a mush-
room, so she believes in it. She could see an oak and
believe in that. But she cannot see the acorn growing
underground, therefore she has no faith that there is
an oak growing. And if there is already a little oak in
sight she cannot see it grow, no matter how steadily
she looks at it; therefore she "fears" the oak is not
growing.

But the far-seeing woman is different. She sees
through things. She feels the intangible. She hears,
smells, and tastes that which moves upon the face of the
deep and brings forth things. She touches the true sub-
stance (that which stands under) of things which are
to be.

Her faith rests in invisible life; the other woman's
faith rests only in the visible things which life has
made.

To say that H. B. has no faith would be an untruth.
Every living being is full of faith, or he could not live.
Faith is in the atmosphere and we live by using it,
just as a fish lives by using the water. Faith springs
eternal in every human breast, fed from the universal
source. To talk of one's little faith or one's much faith
is like talking of the earth's squareness.

Every soul lives by faith and plenty of it. But he
38

lives by faith in what ? There 's the rub. Until we
emerge from a sense of materiality — and no one has as
yet got more than his nose above these muddy waters —
we live by faith in things seen, smelt, tasted, heard and
felt. These are the only things we are familiar with;
to them we pin our faith, and pride ourselves upon our
good sense, reason and lack of "superstition." "I can't
believe in anything unless I can see it," is our self-
satisfied cry; "you can't fool me with your religious
hocus-pocus, nor with your rabbit's foot and horseshoe
and four-leaved clover; I can see no connection between
a rabbit's foot and your good luck, therefore I know no
connection exists ; I can see no big God on a great white
throne, consequently I know none exists ; show me your
God; show me the string which connects the four-
leaved clover to your good luck and I '11 put my
faith in it."

The material one reckons without his Unseen Host.
By and by the Unseen begins to juggle with him. His
beautiful plans, every step of which he could plainly
see, are blown awry. He can't see why! The things
in which he had such faith begin to totter and tumble
about his ears. He can't see why ! Eeluctantly he be-
gins to see that there are mighty forces he can't see.
His whole beautiful material world begins to dance to
strings he can't see !

39

Ah, so there are things he can't see, hear, smell, taste
or feel! They may be a fearful and chaotic jumble;
they seem to be; but they are there, after all his cer-
tainty that he could see, smell, hear, taste and feel The
Whole Thing.

And he begins to reach out toward these unseen
things. He peers and peers into the darkness and still-
ness. And as he peers his faiths gradually loosen their
hold upon the old visible things and begin to reach out
into the darkness and silence. He sends his faiths
groping, groping, feeling their way through the In-
visible, always seeking the strings to which visible things
have been dancing and tumbling.

At first all is darkness; but by and by faith gets its
tentacles around Something Unseen; — ah, there is
Something which . disposes what man proposes — an un-
seen, untasted, unheard, unsmelt, unfelt Something. A
terrible Something it may be, but still a Something, all-
powerful, all-present. He has sent his feelers into the
Invisible and touched God, the soul, the life-principle,
which makes and unmakes, gives and takes away all
those little things to which he was wont to pin his
faiths.

The next thing is to find out the nature of this
mighty Something whose home is in the Invisible. But
how find out the nature of the Unseen ? Not by touch,

40

taste, smell, sight or hearing — not at first anyway. But
by its fruits you may know a tree to be good or bad.
By its fruits you may know the invisible powers to be
beneficent or malefic. And the material one is familiar
with fruits, with things. He built such beautiful things
himself, so he ought to be a judge of the fruits of labor.
The fruits of his labor were all good, he knows they
were. If only the great Unseen had not spoiled them
all ! Oh, the labors of the Unseen brought his own good
efforts to naught — the Unseen must be a terrible and
evil power; its fruits are destruction of his own good
buildings. He fears this Great Unseen Power to which
his faiths are beginning to pin themselves.

But wait: Good is beginning to rise from the ashes
of his ruins. This so terrible calamity is turning out
a blessing! New and greater things are forming, to
take the places of the lost fruits ! And they are good.
Oh, this Great Unseen works in terrifying mystery but
its fruits are good.

Now he is ready to "come unto God." He begins to
see the un-seeable things, and his faiths tendril
them.

Those wrho would "come unto Him must believe that
He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently
seek Him."

Those who would understand and feel and use the
41

invisible forces must believe that they are, and that they
reward those who diligently seek to understand and
use them.

The Unseen things move the visible world. The ma-
terial one being pinned by his faiths to the things of
the world is moved as the world is moved. He is a
mere puppet in the hands of the Unseen powers.

As he looses the faiths which bound him to the world
rack, and sends his faith tendrils into the Unseen, he
becomes one with the powers which pull the world-
strings.

"Faith is the sub-stance (the underlying and creating
principle) of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen."

The material one's faith is pinned to things already
seen ; therefore his creative principle is poured into the
thing already created.

Then Life juggles and tumbles things until the ma-
terial one's faiths are torn loose from their material
moorings, and go feeling out into the Unseen for new
things to cling to. When the whole bunch of visible
things has failed us ; when houses, lands, money, friends,
and even fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters
have gone back on us, what is there left to pin our faiths
to ? And without something to have faith in how could
we live at all? We couldn't live without faiths to

42

steady us; witness the suicides and the deaths from
broken hearts.

And if all visible things have failed us, if our faiths
are broken loose from fathers, mothers, brothers, friends,
houses and lands, where else can our faiths take hold
again except in the region of the Unseen? — the region
where "the wind bloweth whither it listeth and thou
canst hear the sound thereof but canst not tell whence
it cometh nor whither it goeth," the region of substance,
of creative power.

It seems very terrible to have our faiths broken loose
from fathers, mothers, brothers, friends, houses and
lands; but it is good for us, as time always proves.
Broken loose from the effects of creative energy our
faiths reach out into the Unseen and tendril the very
energy itself. From a state of oneness with things we
evolve a new being at one with the creative power within
things.

What are the unseen things to which our torn faiths
begin to attach themselves ? Our faith itself is unseen,
the sub-stance of things hoped for, the substantial evi-
dence of things not yet seen.

What do we hope for that we have not yet seen?
First of all we hope for peace — another of the substan-
tial unseen things. We hope for love, the most sub-
stantial of unseen things. Oh, if we had but peace

43

and love we could count all else well lost ! And behold,
by unseen faith tendrils our bruised faiths attach them-
selves to the unseen substance of peace and love. Wis-
dom is an unseen substance — our unseen faiths attach
themselves to the unseen source of wisdom. Thought
is unseen; our faiths, torn loose from things, begin to
reach out into the unseen realm of thought. Ideals are
unseen things. Our faiths, torn loose from the already-
realized, b^gin to tendril the unseen ideals, the race's
ideals, thef" family ideals, and lastly our individual
ideals. V

Our unseen faiths become one with these unseen
ideals; and; through these little faith tendrils we begin
literally to draw the ideal down into our physical being
and out into the visible world. Through our faith ten-
drils the ideal is literally ex-pressed, pressed out into
visibility.

(When our faiths were attached to material things,
the material things being negative to us, sucked us dry.
Now our faith tendrils reach upward to the unseen ideal
realm of real substance, to which we are negative, and
by the same law of dynamics it is we who draw the life ;
draw it from the unseen realm of real life substance.

Of ourselves we could do nothing — the things to
which our faiths attached us sucked us dry of power,
and the unseen powers finally tore us loose; but now

44

that we are tendriled by our faiths to the Unseen, "the
Father" in us and through us doeth the works of Tight-
ness that bring peace.

And behold, we are filled with the unseen power, and
through our faith in the Unseen we pass on the fruits
of the spirit, which are "love, joy, peace, longsuffering,
gentleness, meekness, faith, temperance."

And being filled with the power of the Unseen we
pass on the fruits of the spirit to fathers, mothers,
brothers, friends, houses, lands; pass it on in every act
of life and in every breath we take. We breathe out
that which, through our faith-tendrils, the Great Unseen
breathes into us.

Then, behold, that which is written comes to pass:
"Ye shall have an hundredfold more houses and lands
and fathers and mothers and brothers in this present
time/' You shall have them to use at will.

While you were attached by your faiths to things
they used you; now you use them.

Pin your faiths to the Unseen things and let patience
have her perfect work. So shall you realize your heart's
full desire. Let things rock as they will; let facts be
stubborn and conditions hard if need be. Never mind
them. To mind them is to pin your faiths to them.

Mind the Unseen things. Pin your faiths to your

ideals^}

45

Flout facts and hard conditions ! Believe in the Un-
seen.

Train your faiths upward.

"Whatsoever ye desire believe that ye receive/' and
you shall surely have it. If it is a mushroom expect it
in a night. If you desire a great oak give it time to
grow. In due time., perhaps in an hour when you least
expect it, it will surely appear.

The one thfng needful is to pin your little faiths to
the Unseen Source of all things.

Believe in the great unseen part of yourself and the
universal.

46

VI.
To Get at the Substance.

f All desirable and as-yet-unexpressed things are in the
silence waiting to be drawn into expression through as-
piration and inspiration.

Of course one can aspire and inspire anywhere and
under almost any conditions. I remember one great
aspiration of mine which was satisfied whilst I was
sitting in a crowded street car with folks standing in
front of me and others clinging to the running
board.

The Things of the Silence are everywhere present,
permeating solid things as the X-rays do. All creation
cannot hinder a man communing with the Unseen at
any time and in any place — all creation cannot hinder
him except as he lets it.

But that is the trouble — he lets it interfere unless he
is in almost agonizing earnest about the unseen things.
That momentous hour on the crowded street car came
after weeks of most earnest "seeking," after weeks of
almost constant "concentrating" on this one thing I
wanted to receive from the Unseen. I was so absorbed

47

in that one subject that the crowds were as nothing
to me.

In order to get anything— wisdom, power, love — from
the silence one's whole interest must be absorbed in the
matter.

Your interest is like the plate in a camera; it re-
ceives impressions only from that upon which it is
turned. And the camera must be held steadily in one
position until the impression is received.

The human camera receives impressions from the
unseen in exactly the same way that it receives impres-
sions from the seen world.

But it takes a longer time to receive a complete im-
pression from the unseen, just as it takes a longer time
to get a good negative in the dark.

The unseen is the dark to us; hence the long time it
often takes to get a complete impression of anything
we desire to receive in the silence. It takes a longer
"exposure" to get the impression.

"Concentration" is merely the steady "exposure" of
the attention, the interest, to the thing we desire to
realize, to make tangible.

Now the busy person, the person who is interested in
a thousand things, keeps his interest so busy taking in-
stantaneous photographs that he has no time to get im-
pressions from the unseen. His mind is constantly

48

flitting from one thing to another. When it happens
to turn toward the unseen it simply sweeps the dark
quickly and comes back to earth again without an im-
pression.

Instead of a steady aspiration toward the ideal there
is a constant perspiration toward the real.

As there is nothing new under the sun the only pro-
gress made is around and around the same old
things.

The only real relief from things as they are lies in
the unseen.

The only way to get at the relief is to "concentrate"
on the unseen things. In order to do this the attention
must be called away from seen things. The mind must
be "set on things above," and kept set until the "renew-
ing" is complete.

People who are not yet satisfied that the visible world
does not and cannot satisfy, will see no need of going
into the silence on set occasions. And there is another
class who are apt to see no need of it — the class whose
"concentration" on the invisible is so constant that
material things assume the subordinate relation. These
are people who have "got the truth" by coming up
through great tribulation; who have run the gamut of
things and found the principle behind things.

And almost invariably, if not always (I have never
49

heard of an exception), these are people who have tried
nearly every method of spiritual culture extant, have
practiced fasting and prayer, breath exercises, denials
and affirmations, and treatments and concentrations of
every conceivable kind.

Martin Luther was one of these; and at last, when
he had tried everything else and was crawling up the
church steps on all fours, he "found the truth." Imme-
diately he arose, repudiated all his good works as un-
availing, and went about praising and preaching that
not by works but by faith we are healed.

Eight or ten years ago I heard Paul Militz, who had
worked for years at all manner of spiritual, mental and
breath exercising, repudiate it all as "unnecessary."
"Not any of these things avails you," he said. And
others who have "found the truth" reiterate the same
statement.

And yet every one of them has "found the truth"
through those very practices.

If Martin Luther had stopped short of crawling up
those church steps as his own seeking spirit bade him,
he would never have "found the truth." If Militz,
Shelton, Burnell, et ah, had left out one of their prac-
tices they would still be "seeking."

The spirit in every man bids him do things and re-
frain from doing other things, in order to "save" him-

50

self from something or other. Is this universal urge
only a lie? No.

These concentration exercises are kindergarten meth-
ods by which we learn to use ourselves. When by prac-
tice we have learned how we discard the kindergarten
methods. What was gained by self-conscious effort be-
comes habit. We turn intuitively to the unseen, whereas
we used to turn to it only by conscious effort, by special
practices.

But why repudiate the practices? Why tell others
who are trying to learn how, that their efforts are all
useless? By practices we found the way; why dis-
courage practice ?

There are people who as yet are wrapped up in the
material. There are those who are wrapped up in the
unseen. Neither of these are in present need of set
times for "concentrating" upon the unseen, the ideal
side of life.

But there is a third great "middle class" who are not
absorbed in the already manifest world, and who want
to be one with the unseen world of causation. To these
I say, follow the example of all the "adepts" of all
the ages; practice "concentration."

To all who want to accomplish something I say,
Go into the silence regularly for power and wisdom to
accomplish.

51

To those whose interests are mainly in the material
world, but who want to understand and be deeply inter-
ested in the unseen world — from whence come all
things, — to those I say, Go into the silence at regular
periods every day.

To all humanity who are longing for Something, I
say, All things are in the Silence ; be still and know, j

52

VII.

The Spirit and The Individual.

"I was washing my breakfast dishes one morning when it
occurred to me to go to visit a friend who lived several miles
away. I did my work and started to dress for my journey, when
there came over me such a feeling of depression, or despondency,
or gloom, that I could not understand. I kept on getting ready,
all the time trying to reason away the feeling. But it would not
go. Finally I got my hat on and one glove and started for the
door, when such a heaviness came over me that I turned back
into my room and sat down saying, 'God, I want to know what
the meaning is of all this.' The answer came loud, strong and
firm, 'Stay at home.' I stayed, and taking off my hat, gloves
and cape I felt so light I seemed to walk on air. At the time I
supposed the voice (I call it voice for want of a more definite
term) had told me to stay at home because some one was coming
to me for help. This was my first year as a teacher and healer.
But not a soul came that day, nor that night, and the thought
flitted through my mind that perhaps it was all nonsense after
all and I might as well have gone. Well, the outcome was that
the train I would have taken met with a fearful accident in
which many were killed or badly injured. This is only one of
many similar experiences I have had. I do not stop to reason
out things. The world has tried for 1900 years to follow reason,
and look at the outcome. I follow my intuition and it never
fails me." — Flora P. Howard, Los Angeles, Cal.

One's reason is not a thing to be belittled and denied.
It is his crowning glory, created for use.

But it is not all the wisdom a man has access to, nor
is it the greatest. The man who exalts his understand-

53

ing above the wisdom of the rest of creation, and un-
creation, is a fool and sure to come to grief.

But he who rejoices in his personal understanding or
reason as the means by which he taps the source of all
wisdom, is in a fair way to profit by his own intelligence
and the universal intelligence besides.

Everybody knows his foresight is not so good as his
hindsight. He has demonstrated the fact many a time,
by as many little tumbles off his high horse. Keally, it
seems as if he might have learned by this time not to
be quite so sure about his reason.

After Mrs. Howard knew that the train she meant to
go on had been wrecked she saw, plainly, why it was
unwise for her to go on that particular train. Her
reason had been enlightened, her hindsight per-
fected.

By what? By universal intelligence. Suppose New
York city should set itself up as the center of all wis-
dom— suppose she were to say, "What I cannot reason
out is not worth knowing." Suppose she continued to
send out decrees into all the world, but turned up her
nose at the messages sent in to her. What do you sup-
pose would happen ? She would go to smash in a week.
It is by her reception of all those messages as to out-
side doings, that she is enabled to reason out her busi-
ness problems and send out messages that move the

54

world. To exalt New York knowledge and reason, and
despise outside knowledge and reason, would quickly
ruin her.

Intuition is the wireless line by which we receive
directions from every other station in the universe.
After Mrs. Howard had received and obeyed her mes-
sage from the universal — some days after — she knew
why she had been so directed.

He who is puffed up in his own conceit is eternally
despising his intuitions, following his back-number rea-
sons, and getting into the "accidents." Then he won-
ders why he is so abused.

You see, we have none of us ever passed this way
before. This day is a new day; this bit of road has
never been traveled before. Nobody can know by rea-
son what we shall run into just around the bend there.
He may make a rough guess at it, but he cannot know.

But — there is Something which, whether it knows or
does not know consciously, what is, or will be, around
that corner there — there is Something which can and
does send us by the wireless line a message to keep away,
or to go to it, as the case may be.

Now Mrs. Howard was a woman with no desire to
be in such a smash, and she believed her intuitions
would keep her warned away from them.

Now next door to Mrs. Howard there may have lived

another woman, just as "good" as Mrs. Howard, just
as devoted to her intuitions, who received a message to
go on that train. At the same moment Mrs. Howard's
heart grew heavy and she heard the message, "Stay at
home," this other woman's heart grew light and she
heard the message, "Go." So she went blithely forth to
the train. She mounted the steps and walked into the
ear and along past several vacant seats before she felt
the impression to sit down. She sat down and gazed
happily out of the window.

By and by, as they were bowling swiftly along there
came a sudden crash, and shrieks, and hiss of steam.
Then there was work to do.

This woman neighbor of Mrs. Howard's, beyond a
little shaking up from which she almost instantly re-
covered, was entirely uninjured. There were dead and
dying in front and behind her, but she was safe. There
was work to do and she was there to do it.

You see, this woman was a physician and surgeon,
and the only one on the train. She had been years pre-
paring for such work, and she believed her intuitions
would lead her, strong and well herself, into just such
opportunities as this. So the message which depressed
Mrs. Howard brought light to the soul of this woman.

Each received and interpreted the message according
to her own particular character.

56

And what about the injured and killed? They too
were "led by the spirit." Each by his own self-built
character related himself to his particular "fate." I
would n't wonder if a good many of them did it by
filling up on the accident and criminal columns of the
daily papers. The man who thinks in terms of acci-
dent is pretty sure to meet them. But probably more
of the "victims" were drawn through their false re-
ligion. The man who thinks himself (who really thinks
it, "in his heart") — who thinks himself a "vile worm"
and a great sinner deserving of a "bad end," and yet
who has not "repented," is daily relating himself more
closely to all sorts of violent and horrible things. And
everywhere and at all times the violent man, the strenu-
ous man, no matter how "good" he may be, is prepar-
ing himself to be led into whatever catastrophe fits him.
There is no hit and miss about our "fates" — we get just
what we are fitted for. ^

And through all ages we have been fitting ourselves;
and we are still at it. He who is not busy fitting him-
self for the best is relating himself to the less good.
He who fits himself to die with his boots on will die so.
He who fits himself for "accidents" will die by an acci-
dent. He who fits himself for life may perchance never
again see death.

When the bubonic plague is about to appear in a
57

place all the birds fly away. What warned them ? Oh,
that was only "instinct"— something common, that we
wise beings never use.

Before Mt. Pelee spit destruction, all the wild ani-
mals (not one of which could have had any personal
knowledge, or any record of volcano lore) fled from the
vicinity. The tame animals whimpered and cowered
and those which could ran away. Then the people's
hearts began to sink and the most ignorant of them ran
after the animals. As Mt. Pelee grew more emphatic
in her prophecies all hearts grew heavier and heavier
and all souls heard the message "Go." Then there was
hurried preparation for a hasty exodus. But no; the
wise, educated, sensible men put their heads together
and decided that they would not and others should not
be guided by any such common thing as "instinct," or
by their own sinking hearts. No ! Even though their
hearts fell into their shoes and their knees knocked and
their teeth chattered they would be sensible, they would ;
they'd use their divine reason, they would — Mt. Pelee
had never destroyed them before and it would n't now.

So the wise reasoners corralled the poor fools. And
they were well corralled. Only one ever got away.

Now just what this spirit is like that tries to lead us
into all truth, is a thing I don't know. But that there is
such a spirit that pervades and would save all creatures

58

from harm I do know, both by intuition (the spirit's
witness with my spirit) and by actual and repeated ex-
periences of both kinds. I have been led of the
spirit into ways of pleasantness, peace and plenty; and
before that I turned up my nose at the spirit and went
my own way into all sorts of troubles.

And I have a theory, based on the spirit's witness
with mine, as to what this spirit is and how it acts.
The spirit is the universal intelligence which fills this
universe so full there is not room for anything else.
There are just little eddies and whirls and currents and
cross-currents in this great ocean of intelligence. And
you are one eddy in it, and I another; and each of us
sets up little swirls and currents that move us about
and move other things to us. And when a leaf floats
by it is drawn into our eddy, but when we swirl by
a rock, the rock is unmoved and so are we. We are
not related to the rock.

When gold is placed beside a horseshoe magnet it
stays put. The magnet and gold are not interested in
each other. But that does not prove that the magnet
is stupid and dead. No, there is a great current of
longing in that magnet. If it had means of locomotion
it would go about the world seeking, seeking — perhaps
never knowing just what it was seeking, but still seek-
ing. And by and by it would begin to feel a definite

59

inclination to go in a certain direction. Now if it is
just a fool magnet without great pride in its brains it
will follow that definite inclination. And as it journeys
the drawing power will grow, and it will journey faster,
and behold, it will fly into the arms of its affinity, a
steel bar. And it will cling and cling, and the bar will
cling, and joy will be born.

It takes two, and an exchange of intelligence, to bring
joy into being.

Or perhaps our magnet will stay at home and long,
long, until it draws to it steel filings.

This is not so fanciful as you may suppose. All
things are intelligent. All things are putting their little
compulsions on all creation for satisfaction. And in
due time all compulsions will be met. The great sea
is seething with intelligence, and affinities are coming
together.

It is the attraction of the magnet for the steel that
constitutes what I call the spirit. That attraction is
intelligence.

When in doubt as to the meaning of your solar center
feelings, do nothing. Come back as Mrs. Howard did,
sit down; be still; ask for the meaning; and obey.

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VIII.
By Crooked Paths.

The Rev. Re F. Horton tells a little story of a re-
markable answer to prayer. He was with a party of
tourists in Norway. In exploring some wild and marshy
country one of the ladies lost one of her "goloshes."
The overshoe could not be replaced short of Bergen,
at the end of their tour, and it was out of the question
to attempt to explore that wild country without rubbers.
The golosh must be found, or the tour curtailed.

As you may imagine, every member of the party set
diligently to work to find the missing rubber. Over
and over they hunted the miles of glades and mountain
sides they had traversed. At last they gave it up and
returned to the hotel.

But in the afternoon a thought came to Dr. Horton
— why not pray that they find the shoe ? So he prayed.
And they rowed back up the fjord to the landing of
the morning, and he got out and walked directly to the
overshoe, in a spot he would have sworn he had before
searched repeatedly.

I remember a similar experience of my own. There
61

were four of us riding bicycles along a rather sandy
road some distance from town. Two were spinning
along on a tandem some distance ahead of us, on a
down grade, when a rivet flew out and the chain
dropped. The tandem ran for a quarter of a mile on
down the hill and slowed up on the rise beyond, so that
our friends were able to dismount without injury.

By this time we had overtaken them, having ridden
in their track, and learned for the first time the cause
of their halt. Of course everybody's immediate thought
was, "Oh, we can never find that tiny gray rivet in
this gray dust — probably the other bicycles ran over it —
and home is three miles off !" But we all retraced our
steps, diligently searching. Two of the party are crack
shots with the rifle, with very quick eyesight. I thought
one of these two might find the rivet. But we all
walked slowly back, far beyond the point where they
became conscious of their loss, and no one spied the
rivet.

Then it occurred to me that the high spirit within
had not been called to our assistance. Immediately I
said to myself, "Spirit, you know where the rivet is ! —
please show it to me !"

I thought of the spirit as the Law of Love or Attrac-
tion, which is the principle of all creation, and instantly
the idea came that the little rivet could attract the eye's

62

attention if the eye were willing to be attracted. These
words floated into my mind, "Kivet, rivet, rivet my
eye!"

By this time I had fallen behind the others. So I
walked leisurely, calmly along, eyes willing, and those
words saying themselves over and over in my mind.

And the rivet riveted my eye ! I, who considered
myself very slow of sight, found the rivet. And I know
it was because I turned to the universal self, to God,
to the Law of Attraction for the help needed, for the
knowledge which not one of us had in consciousness,
but which was certainly present in the universal mind
in which we live and move and have our being.

Just the other day I had a little experience which
illustrates the "man's extremity is God's opportunity"
idea. For years I have said I could never find ready
made garments to fit me. Have tried many times;
waists all too short and narrow in front, sleeves skimpy.
But I keep trying, every year ; for everything is evolving
you know, even clothes and tailors.

I wanted a new white lawn shirt waist and wondered
if I could n't find one ready made. Tried in the big-
gest suit house in Springfield; no good. Then one day
I had an impulse to try the best places in Holyoke.
One or two almosts, but nothing that would quite do.
Gave it up.

63

Then I had another impulse to try a store of which
I have always said, "I never found there anything I
wanted." I nearly passed the store, saying to myself,
"No use to try there, and it is late anyway." But there
came the thought, or rather impression, that the spirit
impelled me and I would better go. "We '11 see if it is
the spirit," I said to myself — "I believe it is." It was.
I found the waist I wanted, and I found a pretty white
lawn suit besides ! In the most unlikely corner in the
vicinity, according to my judgment and experience.

There is a little law in here that I want you to notice.
The spirit leads us through impressions or attractions;
and it is limited in its revelations by our mental make- i
up, which is the conscious and ruling part of us.

Why did not the spirit impress me in the first place
to go to that store, where that waist and dress had been
waiting for me since spring? And I had wanted them
since spring. The spirit did impress me about it, but
when the spirit said "shirt waist" to me I said, "Spring-
field— if they have n't a fit there they won't have it any-
where ; and anyway I know I '11 never find it." But I
tried — without faith. That shut the spirit up for the
time.

But at the very first opportunity, on the first after-
noon when I was n't too busy to even think about such
things, the spirit whispered "shirt waist" to me again.

64

And I did n't let the spirit get any farther with its
impressions ; instead of asking the spirit where to go for
a shirt waist I said, "Oh, yes, shirt waist — of course —
I '11 go to A/s and B/s and C.% where I generally get
other things that suit me."

You see, my habit mind, preconceived opinions, again
settled the matter. It was not until I had given up
finding anything at these places, and was going right
by the door of the other store, that the spirit had a
chance even to whisper its name to me. The spirit had
to lead me around all my prejudices in the matter, be-
fore it could get me to think of that place. My mind
was open to the thought of the shirt waist, but it was
closed hard and fast against the idea of that particular
store. At least the direct mental route to that store
was closed. So the spirit had to lead me around by
back alley brain-connections. But now the direct route
is open.

The spirit always goes shopping with me, and nearly
always the direct mental routes are open, so I have lots
of fun shopping, never waste a lot of time at it, and I
nearly always get just what I want, many times at
bargain prices, though I almost never look at bargain
ads in the papers. But many, many times have I gone
into a store to buy a certain thing and found a big
special sale on, of that very item.

65

Do you think these are very trivial things to be both-
ering the spirit about? I don't. The spirit is all-
wise, all-powerful, everywhere present, and its chief end
and joy is to direct folks aright.

The spirit is a sort of universal floor-walker to
straighten out the snarls between supply and demand
in all departments of life. And I think it is a pretty
heedless or foolish individual who won't consult it in
every little dilemma.

And I notice that, in spite of this thought, I find
myself ignoring the spirit — thinking I know of course
where I 'd better go for a shirt waist.

It seems hard to remember that Life's store is always
growing and changing, so that we can always save time,
money and needless meandering, by asking the spirit.

Herein lies the secret of all our little experiences
when it looks as if our leading of the spirit was all
wrong and our prayers, longing and desires all unan-
swered. The spirit never fails us. It is we who grow
weary following the spirit; which must lead us to the
desired goal by way of our own mental paths.

You see, it is a matter of cutting new streets in our
mental domain, so it won't be necessary for the spirit
to take us by such roundabout ways. It is a matter of
clearing out our rocky prejudices so we '11 not have
to travel around them.

66

r

And here the spirit helps us again. As soon as the
spirit succeeded in getting me around all my prejudices
and into that store I wiped away the prejudice. So
there is a straight mental street now where none existed
before. The next time the spirit says "shirt waist/' to
me it can send me straight to D/s if it wants to.

Yes, the spirit "moves in a mysterious way its won-
ders to perform." It looks mysterious to us until we
are led back by the straight way. Then it is so simple,
so easy, we can hardly believe the spirit would conde-
scend to it !

Ah, but it does ! Nothing is too small, or too great,
for the spirit's attention — if we believe. When we
don't believe we are to be pitied — and the spirit keeps
discreetly mum.

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/ am the poet of the body and I am the poet of the soul.
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of

hell are with me,
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I

translate into a new tongue.

I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to he a woman as to be a man.
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of
men.

I chant the chant of dilation or pride,

We have had ducking and deprecating about enough,

I show that size is only development.

— Walt Whitman.

IX.

Spirit the Breath of Life.

"My healer teaches that I must depend alone upon Spirit;
that breathing exercises, foods, sunshine and air must not be
made the dependence for health. He says, 'Why, you can't
help breathing.'"

That is tommy rot. Sunshine and air are spirit, and
the plain truth of the matter is that if you don't use
them all your "dependence on spirit" will avail simply
nothing. Try living in a north room with the win-
dows shut, and see.

You "can't help breathing/' but your breathing
avails nothing unless by it you take in good fresh live
spirit in the way of pure air and sunshine. If we all
lived under the sun and slept under the stars that
healer's advice might be good enough. But we don't.
We live in tight, dark rooms whence the spirit of life
has fled, leaving only its cast off effluvia. We "can't
help breathing," but what do we breathe? We breathe
the dead air of close rooms.

Spirit is LIFE, and we live by breathing it. Spirit
is in fresh air ; fresh air is in spirit ; fresh air and spirit
are one. Dead air is air minus spirit, or life.

69

What good will it do you to say you depend upon
spirit when you don't; when you shut yourself away
from the spirit of life and breathe death?

Pure air and sunshine are spirit specially prepared
for your use. What good will it do you to pretend that
you depend upon spirit when you shut yourself into
rooms whence the spirit has flown ?

If you live in close rooms you may "affirm" your de-
pendence upon spirit until you are black in the face,
and you may be "treated" every hour of the day by this
healer and 10,000 more like him, and the result will be
only sickness and death.

I know in my heart and soul and mind that this is
true. And I have seen the truth of it demonstrated
by hundreds of cases of people who failed to get well on
"treatments" of any sort, and who afterward did get
well on sunshine, fresh air and full breathing, along
with mental treatment.

The Gospel of Fresh Air is more needed by human
beings than even the Gospel of New Thought. If we
understood and applied the Gospel of Fresh Air we
should think right without trying.

It is in gloomy, unaired corners that evil thoughts
breed — because the spirit of life is not present there in
such form that it can be appropriated by human beings.
They get therein the Breath of Death, and generate

70

thoughts to match — distorted thoughts of death and
evil and despair.

Come into the sunshine and breathe the Breath of
Life, which generates in you the New Thought of Life,
Love, Wisdom, Truth, Health, Happiness, Success.

New Thought will not save you unless you live it,
and a little observation and experimenting will prove
to you that you can't live it without breathing plenty
of fresh air.

If "all is spirit" why does this healer tell you that to
regulate your breathing, exercise, food, etc., is to de-
pend upon something outside spirit?

The fact of the matter is this: He fails to realize
that all is spirit. He is still tangled up with good and
evil, spirit and not-spirit, God and devil. He does not
see spirit in everything and everything in spirit; so he
puts the Keep-Off-the-Grass sign wherever he does not
see spirit. This will not prevent his pointing you to
the spirit where he does recognize it. None of us are
wise enough as yet always to see God in all his works.

It is spirit which makes us breathe. When we shut
ourselves away from the pure breath of life we shut
away the power that makes us breathe.

And when we are too interested in doing indoor work
the spirit finds it pretty hard work to make us breathe
enough to keep us in good condition for growing. Close

71

rooms and sedentary work defeat the spirit's will to
make us breathe.

So we, by working against the spirit, form a habit
of breathing too little, thus robbing ourselves of the
life, health, wisdom, power, joy which the spirit is try-
ing to give us with every breath.

Now we find ourselves hampered by self-imposed
habits which need breaking. So we set ourselves to
work with the Spirit of Life. We throw open the win-
dow and let in the Spirit of Life.

We go out doors and revel in the Spirit of Sunshine.

We run and jump to make ourselves inbreathe the
Spirit of Life.

Being too busy to spend hours every day outdoors
we do stunts in our nightdresses to make us inbreathe
more of the Spirit of Life.

And always, night and day, winter and summer, we
take pains to leave our windows well open that the
Spirit of Life be not shut away from us for one single
moment.

We are learning to depend wholly upon the Spirit.

( We used to remember the Spirit only on the Sabbath

day ; now we remember it every day and all day and all

night— we remember to breathe it and eat it as well

as think it.

And verily we are blessed.}
72

X.
Affirmation and Wheels.

Mere repetition of "I Am Success" statements will
avail little. One must think the thing he desires, and
he must put his shoulder to the wheel. But the person
who is full of the sense of failure and defeat is more
apt than not to put his shoulder to the wrong side of
the wheel. He is so discouraged and preoccupied and
worried that he thinks it does n't matter much where
he puts his shoulder, the thing won't budge anyway. So
he goes stupidly along drudging away with his shoulder
in the same old spot — the wrong spot.

But let that man make up his mind that there is a
way to budge that wheel and he will find it; and you
will see things move. That man will walk around that
wagon a time or two, take in the lay of the land, pat
his horses into willing humor, maybe back 'em up a
bit, ring out a cheerful "Gid ap," and settle his shoul-
der to the right spot at the right moment — and away
they go. Or another team will pass just at the right
time to give him a lift out.

The man who believes himself equal to any emer-
73

gency which arises will be strong mentally and phys-
ically. His mind will be alert, full of expedients. In-
stead of pushing like a blind mule at one spot until he
drops in his tracks, he will use his gumption and find
another way. He will conjure up a lever of some sort
to budge that load. If he can't do it alone somebody
else will come along in the nick o' time to give him the
lift he needs. He believes he will work it somehow,
and he does.

The "I Am a Failure" man never has anybody come
along in the nick o' time. "Just my luck," he whines,
and keeps on putting his shoulder to the wrong part
of the wheel, or tugging hopelessly and half-heartedly,
or — with inward rage that takes more energy than the
tug — keeps on until he has to give it up for the
time.

To affirm "I Am Success" will not pull the load out
of the mire except as it awakes energy to intelligent
effort. All affirmations and all going into the silence
are useful in waking mental and physical energy to
intelligent action.

All chronic failures are such because they believe in
failure and opposition and "malicious animal magnet-
ism" and general all-around the-world-is-against-me-
ness. This belief in failure fills the individual with an
affinity for undesirable things.

74

The infallible cure, the only cure, for failure, is be-
lief in success, belief in one's own power to turn even
defeat to good advantage. The man who "does n't
know when he is beaten" will never be beaten. The
"lunkhead" who "did n't know he was a lunkhead" went
to the top, while the lunkhead who knew he was a lunk-
head stayed at the lunkhead end of the class.

One of our big pork packers once tramped across the
continent because he hadn't money to pay his way.
After he arrived at his destination he said he saw on
his tramp hundreds of places where he could have
started in without a cent and in time made piles of
money- — opportunities just crying to be developed.
Only the thought of a bigger chance at the end of the
route kept him from stopping in the very first town on
his route!

But that boy had success in him and was on the alert
for opportunities. He believed in himself and the
world. The failure believes only in "bad luck" and his
eye is out for "soft snaps," which he is certain he'll
never get a chance at. When a man is looking for
trouble and defeat he finds them.

"As a man thinketh in his heart so is he." That does
not mean that a man may make a few affirmations of
success, or profess new thought, and immediately become
a success. The heart of man is the emotional center of

75

his habits or instinct, the center from which radiate his
instincts, his habits, as the nerves radiate from the solar
plexus.

Instincts are habit thoughts, heart thoughts. And
every instinct came into being through conscious thought
and effort. Follow your internal experiences while
learning to play the piano, and yon will gain a clear idea
of how instinct comes into being. At first your fingers
are stiff and every movement is a voluntary one, every
movement has to be thought about, directed by thought.
But gradually you acquire the habit of handling your
fingers in a certain way. Gradually you cease to think
at all about your finger movements; you "do it in-
stinctively." In other words you have trained your
heart, your subconscious mind, to do the thinking for
you. Henceforth, instead of thinking consciously about
your finger movements you think about them in your
heart, that is, sub-consciously.

Psychologists say that not more than five per cent of
our mental processes are conscious, the remaining
ninety-five per cent being under the consciousness.
This means that at least ninety-five per cent of our
thoughts are habit thoughts, or "instinctive" thoughts.
It is this instinctive part of us, this ninety-five per
cent of us, that is referred to in the Bible as "the
heart." Now if this "heart" of us carries at least

76

ninety-five per cent of our mentality you can easily see
why a man is what he "thinketh in his heart." And
yon can see why a few affirmations of success, or even
a good many of them, will not change the man suffi-
ciently to make any great difference in his surround-
ings. And you can see why a mere intellectual concep-
tion of new thought is not enough to change him and
his environment.

Man is a magnet, at least ninety-five per cent of which
is habit mind. Therefore by far the greater part of
his environment comes to him by its affinity to his
ninety-five per cent habit or instinct mind, his under-
conscious mind, of whose workings he is practically
unconscious.

So it is no wonder he so often says, "I don't see why
this undesired thing should come to me." He cannot
see why it comes, because he is practically unconscious
of that great ninety-five per cent of his thinking which
draws them. He knows he does not consciously desire
these unpleasant things and he can scarcely conceive
the fact that he is conscious of only about five per cent
of his thoughts and desires. And, too, he is loath to
acknowledge that the greater part of himself has no
more sense than to bring such things to him ! He feels
more complacent when he lays the blame at the door
of "environment," or "wicked people," or "malicious

77

animal magnetism," or a "God who chastens whom he
loveth," or a devil who got loose from God's leading
strings and goes raging about to pester good folks.

Man is a magnet, and every line and dot and detail
of his experiences come by his own attraction. "As a
man thinketh in his heart so is he." The preponderance
of attraction comes through the instinct self, the
"heart."

And there is no use in trying to fight off, or run
away from, the things which come to us. We only hurt
ourselves by fighting. And to run away from the things
we have attracted is to run into the arms of similar, or
worse, conditions. We have to take ourselves along.

The only way to change conditions effectually is to
change "the heart," the habit or instinct mind.

This can be done with more or less ease, according
to the degree of setness of character and the degree of
will and enthusiasm brought to bear.

The key to all change of character lies with that little
five per cent conscious mind, which with all its littleness
is a sure lever by which to move the ninety-five per
cent ponderosity below it. For conscious thought is
positive thought, dynamic; while subconscious thought
is negative, receptive. That little five per cent mind
has stronger compelling power than several times its
bulk of subconscious mind, and there is not an atom of

78

all that ninety-five per cent subconscious mind which
cannot be moved by that little five per cent mind which
lies at the top.^j

The conscious self is the directing power. Just as
it directed your fingers to change their fixed habits, so
it can direct any change in other lines of mental or
bodily habit — by directing persistent, quietly insistent
practice on the desired lines. Insist upon right con-
scious thinking, and in due time you cannot fail to
have right subconscious thinking.

To think good, peace, love, self-command, self-faith,
success, long and faithfully enough will fill even the
most set "heart" with habits of good, peace, love, self-
command, self- faith, success. And in proportion as the
heart becomes filled with such habits the environment
and experiences will change to match.

How long will it take thus to transform you by the
renewing of your whole mind ? All depends upon you.
If your practice is fitful and half-hearted it may take
another incarnation or two. If you go at it with a
steady will, cutting off all distractions which sap your
will and enthusiasm, practicing faithfully and diligently
at the new mental habits you may make the desired
change in, say, half a lifetime or less.

And if you can bring to your assistance a high spir-
itual exaltation and faith you can make the change in

79

almost no time at all. For spiritual exaltation and
faith and enthusiasm will literally melt the hardest
"heart" and permit a quick re-formation.

This is the secret of quick accomplishment in chil-
dren; their hearts are clean and molten in the emo-
tional fires of enthusiasm and faith, ready to receive
deep and lasting impressions. By reason we grown-ups
have cooled and even quenched the heart fires of faith
and enthusiasm; so it takes time and repetition to re-
form us.

This is the secret of miracles. Religious enthusiasm
and exaltation are akin to the fires of youth; they melt
the heart to receive higher impressions.

The rationalist must receive his new impressions by
painstaking hammering in. Repetition and time will
do for him what religious or youthful enthusiasm does
quickly for babes and fools.

No, affirmations will not do the work of "putting your
shoulder to the wheel" when the load is stalled. But
they will transform you, heart and consciousness, so
that you will attract better horses as well as wheels,
better roads, more friends to happen (?) around in the
moment of need. And affirmations of the right sort
will wake up your gumption so that you will not over-
load your horses or your personal energies to the point
of needing a shoulder at the wheel.

80

Success is the natural result of intelligent direction
of effort.

Affirmations of success, faith, wisdom, power, good,
love, will wake your latent forces to more intelligent
uses.

The more enthusiasm you can conjure into the affir-
mations the more quickly will you realize success.

81

April Rain.

It is n't raining rain to me,

It's raining daffodils;
In every dimpled drop I see

Wild flowers on the hills.
The clouds of gray engulf the day

And overwhelm the town —
It is n't raining rain to me,

It 's raining roses down.

It isn't raining rain to me,

But fields of clover bloom,
Where any buccaneering bee

May find a bed and room.
A health unto the happy,

A fig for him who frets —
It is n't raining rain to me,

It's raining violets.

— Robert Loveman in Harper's.

82

XL

Your Forces
and How to Manage Them.

f You can overdo anything, even self -treatment. If
yon keep repeating affirmations to yourself your mental
chattering interferes with the real healing.

It is not the conscious mind which heals you; it is
the subconscious or soul mind and the super-conscious
or Over-Soul mind.

Your souFs expression is guided and directed by your
conscious mind. A mental affirmation is simply a word
of direction to your soul mind. The soul hears your
statements and then builds accordingly.

But what would happen if you called up your house-
maids and told them over and over, just what you
wanted done and just how to do it ? If you spent all
your time repeating your directions to them when would
they get the work done ? And would n't they get your
directions mixed, too ? Of course.

You don't do it that way, of course not; not if you
are a wise housekeeper. You call up your maids and

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tell them quietly and kindly, and in as few words as
possible, just what you want done. Then they go cheer-
fully away out of your presence and do their best to
please you. If you later come across something which
was not done right you call in a maid and repeat your
directions, with perhaps a little further explanation.
Then you go away again and trust her to do it aright
this time.

What would happen if you tagged around after your
maids and tried to watch and criticise and direct every
little movement? Why, they would grow nervous and
make foolish mistakes and you would all give up in
despair.

And what would happen if you directed them to do
a certain difficult piece of work and then came back
five minutes later expecting to find it all done? Oh,
you can't imagine yourself doing such foolish things!

Perhaps you don't with your maids, but evidently
you do with your own self. Your objective, everyday
consciousness is the mistress or master of your being.
Psychologists say the objective mental activities are not
more than one twentieth of all your mental activities.
That means that the mistress mind has the equivalent
of at least twenty maids under her direction. These
"maids" belong to the subjective mind, or soul of you.

Then there is the great Over-Soul, of which your in-
84

dividual soul is but an atom; but an atom whose every
demand is heard. That means that your little mis-
tress mind not only has at her bidding the equivalent
of at least twenty maids of the subconscious, but she
has also at her call the equivalent of ten million billion
other helpers of the infinite Over-Soul.

And all the mistress mind has to do is say the word.
All these helpers fly to do her bidding.

Perhaps you think all these helpers don't fly to do
your bidding. But they do. The only trouble with
you is that you don't give your helpers time and chance
to work out your desires. You keep repeating your
directions over and over, and you keep trying to tag
around after all your twenty or more housemaids to
see if they are doing the things you want done. You
watch them in your stomach and your liver and your
lungs, always fretting for fear they are going wrong.

iSTo wonder you get nervous and fidgety and strained
all over; no wonder your "feelings" are no better than
they were !

Make your statements of health, happiness and suc-
cess at certain regular intervals, say two or three times
a day. Or make them at times when you can't get your
mind off your conditions.

Make the statements plainly and positively. Then
call your mind entirely away from the subject and give

85

your soul and the Over-Soul a chance to work. Make
light of your feelings and go get well interested in
some good work.f

Take it for granted that all your being, and all crea-
tion besides, is working out for you the things you de-
sire. Eest easy and trust yourself. I

Don*t let your mind tag your feelings and symptoms ;
give it plenty of useful work and plenty of play and
plenty of rest while your soul works things out for you
as fast as it can. Just be as interested and happy as
you can while the soul is working. Jolly yourself into
having a good time.

Say the Word, and then be happy and do not allow
yourself to doubt that the soul will do the work. This
is the secret of quick healing. The nearer you can come
to keeping your mind pleasantly occupied between the
times when you give yourself special affirmations and
treatments, the more quickly you will realize health of
mind, body and environment as well as soul.

Thy faith in thy soul and the Over-Soul will have
made thee whole.

The faithless mind is a terrible meddler and creator
of discords; and the idle mind, the mind not directed
to useful purposes, is always a faithless meddler.
Moral; Get interested in some good work.

86

XII.

Duty and Love.

Though you work your fingers to the bone and have
not love for your work it profits -you next to nothing
and your employer less than it ought to.

Duty work robs the doer of the joy of doing, which is
the chief compensation for all work.

You imagine you do your work well from a sense of
duty. You would do it better still if you loved it. If
you loved it you would enjoy every bit of it, and you
would glory in every little improvement you hit upon;
and you would hit upon a lot because your soul would
be playing through your fingers.

The soul of the duty doer is shut away from his work
— he works with his fingers and his habit mind only.
By the end of the week he is fagged out and his poor
soul droops for lack of exercise; then perhaps he takes
it to church for relief ; and shuts it carefully away again
before Monday morning.

And the worst of it is that so many people make a
virtue of keeping their souls locked up six days out of
seven. They parade duty as their mainspring. And

87

f

even when they do happen to let a little soul, a little
love and joy into their work they won't acknowledge it.
They stick to it that it is "duty" which impels them.
When the soul does manage to get out of its shell and
express itself in useful work the brain denies it the
glory and happiness which belong to it. The worker
resolutely shuts off the joy vibrations with that stern
word "duty." He robs himself of the pleasure of his
honest effort.

There are two ways of robbing one's self of the joy
of work. One is by paralyzing joy with "duty"; the
other is by scattering the mind and soul all over crea-
tion whilst the hands are doing something. In the
former case the soul is shut away in idleness; in the
latter it is wasted in riotous thinking.

The soul's power is emotion, that which flows from
the silence within. The nature of emotion is motion.

To let emotion move through the body, out into in-
telligent effort, is joy and eternally welling life and
strength and wisdom.
/ To let the mind wander while the hands work is to
fritter your soul force away at the top of the head — the
power which should move from the head down through
the body and out into intelligent doing, is simply dis-
sipated into thin air.

The wandering mind robs the body of vitality and
88

joy. It is the prodigal who wastes all your substance.
The duty doer is a niggard. He lets some of his soul
into his work, shutting the rest tight within. He puts
his thought into his work, but he is stingy with his soul,
his love. He works coldly, stolidly, conscientiously, re-
minding himself constantly that he is to "be good for
nothing," as the wise mamma commanded the little
boy who wanted a prize for being good.

Now everybody knows that cold contracts things.
The cold duty doer shuts off his soul warmth and his
body grows gaunt and pinched, his brain cells stiff, his
thoughts angular. He shuts off the inspiration of love
and joy and works like a machine, grinding out the
same old things by the same old pattern.

The duty doer converts a real living, growing, loving
being into a mere cold machine. It 's a shame.

And the whole cause is the old fathers5 tradition that
duty is greater than love. I wonder where they got
that notion?

The same spirit led them that leads us. That same
spirit must have led them and us into duty do-
ing.

Why? To gain self-control that we might have the
greater joy. That is it ! First there is the "natural,"
the animal way of doing things; just to follow impulse
and gratify self at no matter what expense to others.

89

But somehow you are not very happy after you have
done it.

Then there is the mental way of doing things, the
"duty" way; when we cut off all the old "natural" im-
pulses and teach ourselves to work stolidly, steadily in
the "right" line. It takes about all our thought and
effort to control ourselves in this mental way; it requires
a firm unrelenting hand upon our impulses. But we
were not happy when we didn't control our impulses,
and we are at least at peace when we do. So we keep
on crushing back the "natural" impulses and sticking
sternly to duty. When we followed the old animal im-
pulses to have things our way right or wrong, without
regard to the other fellow, we were always lured on by
the hope of joy; and when we got the thing desired, as
we sometimes did, it was only to be disappointed. So
we were full of unrest. Since we have chosen the ways
of duty there are no joys to lure us, but rest accompanies
us. In the old way we were always sure we were going
to be happy; in the duty way we have ceased to expect
happiness but we really have peace. And a peace in the
heart, we have learned from sad experience, is worth
two joys in the bush. We have been oft bitten and thus
learned caution: so we keep on schooling ourselves to
keep the peace and shut eyes and ears to promises of
pleasure.

90

We have learned to follow "conscience" instead of
"natural impulse." Conscience is merely spiritual
caution. The faculty called caution warns us from out-
ward danger; it was created by many ages of race ex-
perience in getting its fingers burned and its shins
kicked and its head broken. Conscience warns us from
inner dangers; and is being created by many ages of
human experience at stealing from the other fellow only
to find its own heart robbed of peace and happiness.
We tasted impulse and found it sweet at first and
bitter, bitter at the last. Then we tasted duty and
found its first pungency melt away to a clean sweetness
such as we had never tasted before ; a sweetness so pure
and satisfying that it is no wonder we keep clinging
to the duty doing which brought it.

When we lived from unchecked and unguided im-
pulse only we were many times happy on the surface,
when we happened to get the things asked for, but we
were always restless and dissatisfied within. This un-
rest is the voice of the universal spirit within, which is
ever urging us to take our dominion over self and to
direct our energies to higher and yet higher uses; it is
the voice of life, which ever demands a high purpose for
being and doing.

The spirit of the world which is moving us allows
each a few years and many intervals of irresponsible

91

living. We have our childhood when the whole world
smiles and flies to gratify every impulse; and when we
are good children we have our little vacations and play
happily with that sweet taste in our hearts. If we
try to take too many play times the spirit in us is
frowning and restless again, ever urging us to be up
and doing that which will help the world spirit express
the beauties it has in mind for us.

When we quit chasing pleasure and begin to live
and do after the plan set in our hearts the world spirit
whispers "Well done," to us. We find peace. We
taste and see that it is good. Henceforth we work for
the inner peace, not for the fleeting gratification of the
outer senses.

As we follow duty peace deepens and widens. By
and by we form the habit of duty and it grows easier
and easier. We do what seems best because we have
learned that to do otherwise ruffles our peace; and we
have learned to love that peace beyond anything else
life can hold for us.

Peace keeps on deepening and widening and growing
more dynamic. At first it is a solemn calm, and a
little deviation from duty ruffles and dissipates it. But
by and by as we keep on doing our duty, through this
solemn calm, growing ever deeper and broader, there
wells the full diapason of a deep joy — very softly at

92

first, with many diminuendos and silences; at unex-
pected moments it swells again; over little things the
tide of life has brought us — things we loved, and
thought we had given up forever when we chose duty
as our guide. Fitfully at first the deep joy wells, fit-
fully and gently, but, oh, so full and sweet and satisfy-
ing; such tones as our souls never heard before. We
wonder at the deep joy; and, oh, we begin to see that
the world spirit was urging us on to duty only that
we might find deeper joy than the old irresponsible life
could yield us. By taking dominion over self, by using
our energies for higher purposes, we have deepened our
capacity for joy.

Now the harmony of deep joy begins to swell, and
every touch of life but adds to the paeans of praise.

And the good things of life begin to come — houses,
lands, fathers, mothers, brothers, a hundredfold more
than ever before, bringing joy such as we never knew
before. Oh, we thought we had given up the pleasures
of life for its duties, and behold we find the pleasures
added. We used to be fascinated and tossed about
by life's pleasures; now we find them fascinated
and obedient to us — oh, the power and glory and
joy of it !

We gained dominion over ourselves and our environ-
ment through doing our duty. We gave up the short-

93

sighted impulse will "to follow the omniscient will which
is working through us, and behold the things we once
desired vainly are now ours to command and enjoy.
No wonder we laud duty !

But duty is a schoolmaster whose work we do not
need forever. When we have made its wisdom our own
we outgrow duty. Duty flowers in love.

The more resolution and persistence we put into duty
doing the sooner we shall outgrow it.

The more pleasure we can get out of duty doing the
faster we shall outgrow it. When the worker puts his
soul into his duty, duty is swallowed up in love, and
joy grows.

Many a duty worker cheats himself out of the joy
which is his, and stunts the growth of his joy and him-
self, simply by denying that he works from anything
but a sense of duty.

As long as our best efforts are called duty they answer
to the call as cold, hard duty.

As soon as those same activities are called pleasures
our soul joy, and love, are turned into them and they
are transfigured.

The worker who calls his work duty shuts his soul
back from his body and his work. The soul of you is
love, and love has no affinity for duty; so as long as
you insist upon working from a sense of duty you

94

shut in, shut away from your work, the sense of love.
You thus rob yourself of the joy of doing.

And this means that you rob yourself of the greater
share of your power and wisdom for doing.

Love is the essence of all wisdom, imagination and
inspiration, as well as power. To hold sternly to duty
is to shut out love, and with it the wisdom, inspiration
and imagination necessary to improve your work.
You are robbed of the joy of doing, and your work is
robbed of its highest beauty and usefulness.

Quit calling your duties by that name. Jolly your-
self into doing your duty for love of it. Don't you
know how you can jolly a child into doing things?
Have n't you been jollied yourself until at last you
laughed and forgave and did the thing you had sternly
resolved not to do ? Have n't you seen scores of your
friends jollied into doing things? Of course. All
nature responds to a smiling good-willed jolly.

And your soul, your love, will respond to the same
good-willed jollying. It will come out and smile on
your doings, and radiate soul-shine and joy and power
and inspiration through you, and down through your
fingers into your work, and out into your aura, and on
out to all the world.

Smile and come up higher than the duty class — the
joy class awaits you !

95

Express yourself.

Whatever you are, out with it!

We do not want a world of masqueraders;

Make yourself felt, make your real self felt.

Put your private stamp upon the future.

— Ernest Crosby.

96

XIII.
Well Done.

"Natural disaster overtakes a man and he loses every cent.
Possessing untold aversion to becoming a paid employee, he lives
with friends, helping where able, and at the same time reaching
out to grasp something by which to start again. Has an over-
whelming desire to get money for home and marriage. This
conld be had in a very short time by successful speculation, if the
unlimited Force is there as taught, for use on lines of desire.
There is no wrong in the world. Is he then to command the
powers for conscious use, go in faith and win ; or shall he sit
down and build, bit by bit, by uncongenial labor ? " — M. T.

The man who possesses such "an untold aversion to
becoming a paid employee" that he prefers to sponge
a living off his friends rather than to earn it honestly,
will never succeed even at speculation.

Such a man could not generate a desire strong enough
to attract fortune even at a gambling table.

It takes character to generate a desire of the sort
that moves things. It takes steadiness of purpose, posi-
tive determination.

And character, purpose, determination, are never
found in the sponger.

If he had character he would choose any sort of honest
work that would keep him in independence. His "un-

97

told aversion to becoming a paid employee" would be as
nothing to his disgust for sponging a living, even tem-
porarily.

Character is the outcome of an unconquerable self-
respect and self-reliance. A man's character is that
which distinguishes him from a jellyfish, which takes
the shape of any environment that happens along. It
is Something which keeps him upright on his own pins,
no matter what happens.

Character is mental backbone and muscle, and is sub-
ject to the same laws of development and growth as
other bone and muscle.

Bone and muscle and character do not grow by bread
alone, but by use. Character grows by the use of self-
reliance and self-respect, just as physical character
grows by the use of muscles. Character becomes
weak and flabby when self-reliance and self-respect are
kept on the shelf of another man's pantry.

Character develops by exercise. How is it to exer-
cise except by doing things? How is it to do things
when somebody else does them for him?

The first thing a man of character, of self-respect and
self-reliance would do under such circumstances as
M. T. describes would be to overcome his "untold
aversion" to anything which would help him to
continue living in self-respect and self-reliance. In-

98

deed the only "untold aversion" held by a man of
real character is the "untold aversion" to living off
other people.

A person whose aversion to "becoming a paid em-
ployee" is greater than his aversion to idleness and
sponging is a mere "mush of concession" to public opin-
ion—he hates paid employment because he thinks his
neighbors will "look down" upon him, and because he
likes to look aristocratic and give orders rather than to
be what he is and take what orders are necessary for
the time being. Such a man cares for appearances
above all things. He cares for the outside of things,
as a jellyfish does. He seeks first an agreeable resting
place, as the jellyfish does. And he will sacrifice the
last vestige of self-respect, self-reliance, character, to
that fetich, outside appearance. He thinks it looks bet-
ter to live off his friends than to soil his hands to take
care of himself.

But if he had a real character of his own, if he had
mental backbone and muscle worthy the name, he simply
could not crouch and cringe as a dependent, a beggar.
He would have to get out and express himself in some
sort of independent activity, or die.

For character is a deep-down life-urge which will
push to expression through any conditions. It simply
cannot continue to sit supinely by another man's fire-
l nrr 99

side, or wait by the wayside with cap extended to catch
stray pennies from the passers-by.

Character must act, or degenerate.

Character must ex-press, or ex-pire.

Character is to the individual what the channel is
to the river. Take away the banks which confine the
stream and direct it and the water gushes out in an
endless sloppy marsh.

The inner character of a man confines and directs
the life force, the desire force; the stronger the char-
acter the deeper and broader the stream of desire, or
life; and the more positively the man will express him-
self in independent, self-respecting activity. The
stronger the character the greater will be the man's
"untold aversion" to depending upon anybody but him-
self. And so deep and strong are his desires as they
flow through the clear-cut channels of character, that
they force new channels through any circumstances.
Such a man's desires flow deep and strong enough to
carry things his way.

But the man without a strong character is a mere
sloppy marsh of sentimentality. He is incapable of
anything more than "overwhelming desires" — his de-
sire stream, having no strong banks, simply overwhelms
the whole surface of things, with no depth by which to
sweep its way through environment. His desire energy

100

spreads out and wastes itself in mere shallow longings,
unworthy the name of desire. So the man welters in
his own swamp of sensibility, and gets nowhere.

Herein lies the reason that M. TVs man will not find
success at the gaming table, nor anj'where else, except
by "building bit by bit*'" a character strong enough to
find its way to the good things he wants.

The first step toward success is to decide that it is
yours, and that all creation is ready to help you mani-
fest it.

The next step is to work with the world, taking hold
anywhere that the world will let you, in full confidence
that the world will promote you as fast as you prove
your fitness for promotion.

To prove your fitness for promotion necessitates doing
your best with any job the world gives you, and at the
same time using your spare time and thought in fitting
yourself for a better one.

To do one of these things is not enough. The man
who does his work exceptionally well will be kept at
that same kind of work until crack o* doom unless he
shows aptitude for doing more valuable work. The
world is always looking eagerly for men who can fill
the more difficult positions. It is always trying to
tempt people into higher, better paying positions; and
the man who is faithful and efficient in one place, and

101

evinces the slightest capacity for higher work, is always
the first man to get a chance of promotion.

The man who thinks he is 'Isept down" is right; but
he is kept down by himself alone. Either he is slack,
inefficient, uninterested, gumptionless in his present
work; or he is not fitting himself for something better.

Abe Lincoln split rails all day. He split them with
vim and intelligence. But at night he studied books
by the light of a pine knot. All the way along from
rail splitting to the presidency, Abe found some time
out of business hours to inform himself on lines beyond
his work.

The main difference between Abe Lincoln and Abe
Johnson lies in the way they spend their after-business
hours. Abe Johnson, too, works with vim and intelli-
gence. And he never had to split rails for a living.
He is an Al bookkeeper. Been in the same store, with
almost the same salary, for twenty-five years. And
almost every noon and every evening for twenty-five
years he has sat on a "sugar keg in the store and dis-
cussed politics and economics. And very often he has
grumbled to his cronies about his lack of a chance to
rise in the world.

Down here in a Massachusetts town, they have been
having labor troubles for a long time. The cotton mill
owners say the bottom has dropped out of the plain

102

cotton cloth trade and they simply must reduce wages
or close down. There is small demand for the sort of
plain cotton goods manufactured in these mills. The
mill hands say they can't live on any smaller wages and
they won't, so there. So one strike follows another, or
a lockout. For months at a time the mills lie idle while
owners and workers deadlock.

Some one suggested that the mills begin to make the
sort of new fancy weaves of cotton cloth for which there
is increasing demand. But the weavers refused to learn
the new weaves. They said they knew how to do the
plain weaving and it "would n't pay them" to learn the
new kind of weaving on the old wages, which are paid
according to the amount of work done. And many of
them said anyway they were too old to make such
changes now.

So these faithful and efficient weavers go on fighting
and striking and reviling "fate" rather than fit them-
selves for new work which would in the end pay better
than the old.

Poor shortsighted weavers.

Poor shortsighted cousins to the weavers. Poor short-
sighted and disappointed Abe Johnson.

What do you suppose life makes us begin at the bot-
tom for, and "build bit by bit" ? For the sole purpose

103

of building character; building good, strong channels
for desire to run in; channels so deep and full that
the desire-stream will be strong enough to accomplish
for the individual the thing he wants.

And how are we to know we are building the right
kind of character ? By the sense of inner satisfaction
which witnesses every well done deed.

That is where self-respect and self-reliance come in.
Even a baby feels the "Well done" of its soul when it
succeeds in doing something for itself. A child prizes
this inner self-satisfaction, self-respect, above all things
else. Watch the happy look on a child's face when it
has succeeded in doing something for itself.

Only foolish grown-ups value anything on earth
above this inner satisfaction. Only grown-ups will let
other folks do for them what they can do for them-
selves. Only grown-ups will quench themselves for the
sake of appearances. Some grown-ups.

To know thyself is to know that the best thing in
heaven or earth, the best guide in heaven or earth, is
the inner sense of "Well done," the sense of self-respect
which comes from doing things instead of letting them
be done for you.

As long as the innermost self approves your doings
you are building character. And what shall it profit
you if you gain the whole world and lose the "Well

104

done" of your soul ? Nothing ! Less than nothing !
For in all creation or uncreation there is but one real
satisfaction, one real happiness, and that is self-satisfac-
tion, self-respect.

Self-respect springs only from well-doing. It is
"Well done," thy soul says to thee, that gives thee joy.

What matter what Tom, Dick, and Harry and
Madame Grundy say? Be still and hear thyself.

Eye hath not seen nor ear heard the glory and sat-
isfaction which await him who listens to himself.

"Well done, good and faithful servant; enter thou
into the joy of thy Lord" — which is thy innermost self.

105

The Barfed Door.

One night upon mine ancient enemy

I closed my door,
And lot that night came Love in search of me —

Love I had hungered for —
And finding my door closed went on his way

And came no more.
Pray you take counsel of this penitent

And learn thereof:
Set your door wide whatever guests he sent

Your graciousness to prove.
Better to lei in many enemies

Than bar out Love.

— Theodosia Garrison in Harper's Bazar.

106

XIV.

What Has He Done?

We were talking about new thought and the increased
efficiency it gives to people. Evidently he did not think
very highly of the practical side of new thought. It is
all very well to help people to bear their troubles, he
said, but it does not get rid of the troubles.

And I said I thought if it never did anything more
than help people to endure things, it at least helps more
than anything else ever did.

But I assured him that new thought rightly applied
does change conditions, and I cited my own experience
in proof. Then I called his attention to other people,
prominent in the new thought, whose conditions and
health have been changed for good. One of the names
mentioned was that of a successful lawyer well known
to us both. "Well," queried he, "what has he done
that is so wonderful? Others have done as great or
greater things, who never heard of new thought."

Of course. The principles of new thought are the
principles of life itself, and in all climes and times
there have been people who, consciously or uncon-

107

seiously, lived according to principle and thereby mani-
fested health (which means wholeness) of mind, body
and environment.

Wisdom's ways are always ways of pleasantness and
all her paths are peace.

And wisdom is as omnipresent as the ethers, to be
used by him who inspires it — by him who desires it
above all else.

Every pleasant thing and thought in this world comes
by mental breathing of wisdom. And every soul that
ever lived has lived by breathing wisdom.

In proportion to his inbreathing of wisdom has been
the pleasantness of his ways and the peace of his path.

And his nps and downs have come from the fact that
he inspires wisdom in spots only. He keeps on men-
tally breathing, of course ; but he does n't always breathe
wisdom. He is like a man who breathes pure outdoor
air awhile, and then goes into a close room, or down in
a mine, and breathes poison gases.

As physical health depends upon the quantity of pure
air inspired, so physical and mental and environmental
health depends upon the amount of pure wisdom in-
spired.

And nobody will deny that most of us inspire a large
proportion of poison gas of the mental kind, instead of
pure wisdom. We breathe over other peopled thoughts

108

after them, just as we breathe over the air after them.
This breathed-over thought destroys our physical, men-
tal and environmental health. We need to get out in
God's open and breathe new thought, or we shall as-
phyxiate.

Old thought is division, dissension, separateness,
competition.

Xew thought is the great open of principles, oneness,
harmony, God, good, freedom, peace, love.

Xew thought is from ages to ages everlasting. Those
who inspire it, inbreathe it, are the whole and strong
ones, whether they breathe it consciously or uncon-
sciously.

By teachings of new thought the world is learning
to do consciously, intelligently, what a few have done
here and there through all the ages. And need we be
reminded of the advantages of knowing how and why
we do things?

"What has he done that is so wonderful?** The
lawyer we spoke of is not what the world calls "great"
in any line. He has not built up a Standard Oil "sys-
tem,** nor torn one down. He is not a Eoosevelt or a
Togo, or a Xapoleon, nor even an Elbert Hubbard.
His desires and ambitions have run in other lines. He
is not "built that way/*' He "has n't it in him*' to be
a Rockefeller, and lie is glad of it.

109

Why then should he be compared with Napoleon or
Eockefeller? Do we measure roses and violets and
daffodils and chrysanthemums by the same standards?
Is the violet inconsequential because it sheds its sweet-
ness in a shady corner instead of flinging it in midday
from the top of a sunflower stalk? No. We measure
violets by other violets, not by sunflowers or hollyhocks
or peonies.

And men are more diverse than flowers. Every man
has his own individuality, his own soul specifications to
develop by. Every man comes as the flower of a pecul-
iar ancestry, like no other man's ancestry. To judge
one man by another is as foolish as to judge a violet
by a sunflower.

This lawyer we spoke of stands in a class by himself.
He has not achieved what Eockefeller has, but he has
achieved something which satisfies himself better than
the doings of a dozen Standard Oil magnates could.

And what is success but self-satisfaction?

To succeed is to accomplish what one sets out to do.

A growing success is a matter of growing ideals and
a succession of successes.

Our lawyer is satisfied with new thought and its effi-
cacy in his case. By its use he has accomplished a
succession of things he wanted to do. He has literally
made himself over, and his environment, too. And he

110

has evolved new ideals and developed new energies
which show him a joy-full eternity ahead.

He is satisfied with the new thought as a working
principle.

He goes on working by it, growing daily in wisdom
and knowledge, daily growing greater graces of char-
acter, mind, body and environment.

It is the man who does not live new thought teach-
ings who misjudges them by the outward appearances
of other men's lives.

Ill

Nothing before, nothing behind;

The Steps of faith
Fall on the seeming void, and find

The Rock beneath.

— Whittier.

112

XV.
Will and Wills.

In a copy of an old magazine is an article entitled,
"What New Thought Women Say of the Will, by an
Old Thought Woman," who fails to sign her name.
This article is about as cross-eyed as anything I have
read recently. It amuses me. And yet it touches a
responsive chord of stored memories, and I sympathize.
That is, I am enabled for the moment to re-enter the
same-pathy or condition this woman describes. Every
step she has passed through I, too, have experienced.

But I have passed through it all and emerged upon
the spiral above, where I am enabled to understand the
phenomena of wills in relation to each other, and in
relation to the whole.

Briefly stated, "The Old Thought Woman's" idea is,
"The will is a part of that delusive mortal mind.
It is the executor of the world, the flesh and the Devil.
'God's will' is a fiction." "Devil" with a capital D,
mind you. Then she goes on to tell how willful she
used to be; she dominated her relatives, friends and
enemies alike, and even the cats and dogs. "There was

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scarcely no way in which will can dominate that I did
not work to its limits," she says; "I intended to marry
without declaring my views, get the property and sup-
port, but refuse all sensuality," because she was "ada-
mant against child-bearing."

Decidedly a disagreeable person, I should say. I
don't wonder that she was "cordially hated by those
whom she hypnotized and outwitted"; I don't wonder
"pain, anguish, hatred, suffering, disappointment fol-
lowed in the wake of every triumph." Do you?

Then she grew sick of it all and "gave up all will."
"In a complete loss of will, self-will, God's will, all
kinds of will, there is a miraculous condition of affairs,"
she says. Then she goes on to preach Christ's teaching
of non-resistance.

Every positive character, and probably every negative
one, too, passes sometime through an experience iden-
tical with this woman's. The more pronounced the
character the more definite is the change from self-will
to self-abnegation. A negative character will hang on
eternally to his self-will, and the giving up of his will
causes him all the anguish this woman experienced as
a result of using her will.

Now without pointing out to you the mistakes of this
writer let me give you my statement of will, its nature
and uses; after which I think you will see the Old
Thought Woman's understanding needs to grow a bit.

114

Will is the motive, electric force of the universe; the
only force there is.

Will is the energy which forms worlds and swings
them in space; which dissolves all forms and creates
anew.

Will is attraction and gravitation.

Will is love, and will is hate.

Will is the passion, the active force, of the One.

Will is omnipresent and omnipotent.

Without will there could be only stagnation, death,
annihilation.

But there is Will; and there are wills; there is all-
pervading, all-evolving Will, and there are countless
little tossing, warring wills. There is one great ocean,
and there are countless little, tossing wavelets, each
taken up with its own aims to rise above its neighbors.

On the unseen side Will is one, the only One. On
the seen side there are only wills, beginning and ending
within the personal circle.

Will is the executive of omniscience.

Will is the executive of universal, all-evolving Wis-
dom. "Will of God" is no fiction; it is the one im-
mutable, inexorable FACT which personal wills cease-
lessly and uselessly toss themselves against, to their
undoing and the increase of knowledge.

All-Wisdom and All- Will are the one great ocean,
115

from which personal wisdom and will are tossed, and
to which all return.

Will and Wisdom are all there is in the universe;
they are one and inseparable. Water is correctly for-
mulated as W2W, instead of H20 ; and every atom in the
universe, seen or unseen, is simply Will in definite and
varying proportion to Wisdom. The less Wisdom in the
mixture the more foolishly will the Will be exercised.

Will is used commonly as a name for volition exer-
cised by the conscious 5 per cent mind. The individual
reasons from his own narrow view and sets his will to
execute his finite judgments. For the time he sets his
judgment up as infallible, grits his teeth, clinches his
fists and drives through; — until he comes slam up
against Universal Will. It is as if one of your hands
set up a judgment of its own and attempted to force
the other hand to move after his pattern. Your right
hand sees and judges for a right hand, but not for a
left hand.

Just so with this Old Thought Woman; she set up
her judgment and attempted to bring relatives, friends,
enemies, animals, under subjection.

Under subjection to what? — her will? No — under
subjection to her judgments. Her will was simply the
executive — the sheriffs posse. Having a strong will
she had her way in many cases, where a less determined

116

individual would have held just as severe judgments
without having the will to execute them.

Was her will "evil," a "delusion"? No. But her
wisdom was a minus, a personal, quantity and her will
thereby misdirected.

I am a very strong willed woman and I glory in it.
But the time was when I made all kinds of a chump
of myself by setting up my judgment for other people's
guidance, and sending my will to execute my judg-
ments, willy nilly on the other fellow's part. My will
was first class; likewise my intention; but my judg-
ment was exceedingly narrow and crude. I got into all
kinds of hot water, just as this Old Thought Woman
did ; and finally I could n't stand it any longer.

I "went to the Lord." I prayed and agonized and
humbled myself — as I needed to. The trouble with me
was that I had not learned yet that my judgments were
not the best on earth and my will the only executive.
All these failures on my part made me look at last for
higher judgments and mightier will.

Among men I could not find them. Not a writer or
lecturer or friend but showed me plainly that his judg-
ments were as wry and his will as circumscribed as my
own. So I turned to the unseen and unbelieved-in,
but greatly needed and longed for God. I "gave up my
will" — I said, "Not my will but thine be done."

117

It was hard to do, but being a strong willed woman
I did it and did it well. I lived daily with Jesus in
that sublime "Sermon on the Mount."

Of course "I found peace." Having laid aside all
personal aims and ambitions and given up all efforts
to make myself or the world better, I found peace.

An Indian lying full length in his canoe, which is
floating softly and surely down the broad Columbia
toward the ocean, is an emblem of peace.

The individual who wakes up at last to the fact that
what he has been tearing himself in tatters trying to ac-
complish is already being accomplished by a broad river
of Will of which his own will is but a wavelet, finds
himself incarnating peace.

"He that loseth his life shall find it." He that loseth
his will shall find it — for the first time.

I thought I was giving up my will, when it was only
my judgments I gave up. And I gained in return the
entire will of the universe. I changed my point of view
— that was all. I had been seeing countless myriads of
striving, tortured individuals, each warring in chaos to
bring order according to his judgments.

Now I saw God as the animating soul and will and
wisdom working in and through and by these striving
ones.

From a formless wavelet striving to get wp, I became
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the Indian, resting, realizing the mighty Will under-
neath me that carried me unerringly in the right direc-
tion even when I did nothing.

I rested and let the All- Will carry me and everybody
else. At times it seemed that I must spring up and
make this one or that one go right or do right. But I
used my will on myself and kept hands off. I could
not see that the All- Will was bringing this out right;
but / had made such a miserable failure when I was
running things that in sheer despair I determined to re-
sist nothing, compel nobody, but just trust that the
All- Will would bring things out right.

I kept saying to myself, "Hands off — hands off —
loose him and let the All-Will run him," until I really
learned to let the All- Will do it.

Of course I thought, just as this Old Thought Woman
does, that / was exercising no will at all. But I was,
and she is doing it, too. The only difference between
the use of my will before and after this self-abnegation
was this: After I "gave up my will" I had the All-
Will on my side for the first time, and so easy did it
seem to be to let the All- Will do everything, that I did
not realize that the All-Will worked through and by my
personal will. It was as if I had been trying desper-
ately to lift something too heavy for me, and suddenly
my efforts were reinforced to such an extent that it was

119

easy. Or, as if I had been trying hard to shove open
what seemed a door when along came one who showed
me where the real door was and how to open it easily.

I had been using all my will to make myself and
others "good" and suddenly I found the All- Will rein-
forcing my little will — as if a mighty power had been
switched on to my circuit.

This was not really what happened, you know. It
was this : My little will had been striving against other
little wills — as if one finger strove to curtail the action
of another finger. At last, in desperation and with-
out at the time understanding what I did — I let go my
little attempt; and immediately I began to sense the
All- Will working through my will for the accomplish-
ment of larger purposes I had not before dreamed of.

It was hard to strive against other wills — hard; and
the outcome uncertain, and fraught with suffering and
disappointment. But it was easy to let the All- Will
back my will — so easy I failed for some time to realize
I was using any will.

Like Solomon I asked for wisdom, for understanding.
As it came to me I saw that whenever the All- Will
backed my will and made action easy I was on the right
track; whenever I felt a sensation of pulling against
some other will I was on the wrong track and must let
go and rest. Many times the thing I could not at one

120

time do without that pulling against feeling, at another
time I could do easily with that sense that the All- Will
backed me. Sometimes the All-Will backed me in do-
ing what some other person opposed, and yet I was not
backed when I did the opposing.

At first ail this seemed like the capricious "leadings"
of a "spirit." But at last I began to see a principle in it.

I found the Law of Individuality. I found that
when I willed to do anything which I desired, the All-
Will backed me, unless I foolishly desired to curtail
what some other body desired to do — not what some
other body desired me to do, but what he desired to do
without interference with me. Do you see the point?
For instance, I desired to teach and heal; another de-
sired me to cook and sew; and the spirit backed me. I
serenely taught and healed. That other fumed and
fretted, and yet, all serene, I knew the All- Will backed
me. But that other smoked; I considered smoking
wasteful and detrimental; and every time I expressed
my opinions on the subject I felt that the All- Will was
not backing me. This one had a right to smoke, be-
cause he was not thereby interfering with the free
action of another. But when he tried to put me back
in the kitchen he had to use his personal will unbacked
by the All- Will; because the All- Will was backing my
will to get out of the kitchen. On the other hand, the

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All-Will backed his will to smoke; therefore when I
tried to interfere I opposed not only his will but the
All-Will as well.

Now that is just what gives us all so many hard
knocks in the world, dearie. We fail to respect the
other fellow's rights, and in so doing we run against
not only his personal will but the All- Will into the
bargain. No wonder we get some horrible bumps.

When you exercise your will against another's free-
dom of action you shut yourself off from your source
of will supply, the All- Will. This is why you clinch
your fists, grit your teeth and contract your lungs and
muscles. You are shut off from the source of will
supply, and you contract in order to force your will
power against another. Then you are exhausted, and
have accomplished nothing. For if you succeed in
"making him be good" this time he hates you for it.
And he will break out with more force at the next op-
portunity— because the All-Will is baching him even in
the actions you judge as "bad." Remember, the All-
Will backs every personal will except when the personal
will interferes with the free action (not interference)
of another will.

Then, when you attempt interfering with the free
action of another you force out your will upon him,
just as you force out the breath from your lungs. Then

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you have to "catch your breath" and your will again.
It takes time to fill yourself again with will, and whilst
you are doing it you suffer all those horrible sensations
of remorse and weakness and disgust that come over one
after one of these tussles with another will. You have
all these feelings whether or not you succeed in down-
ing the other fellow. Oh, it doesn't pay, dearie. It
does n't pay to use your will except when you can feel
the All- Will backing you.

What new thought people refer to as "cultivating the
will" is simply cultivating acquaintance with and con-
sciousness of the All- Will. It is simply recognition of
will; recognition of the ceaseless, underlying urge of
the universe which is working within and through the
individual to express more and more of beauty and
wisdom and good.

To use the little, personal will apart from the All-
Will one must contract and thus force out his will
upon other people and things.

To use the All-Will one must first know he is right,
then relax and let will flow through him to accomplish
according to his word or desire.

In using the little, personal will one recognizes him-
self a member of a multi-verse — a being separate and
apart from all other beings.

In order to use the All- Will one must first have
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learned his relation to it and to all other persons and
things ; he must have recognized the uni-verse, and him-
self and others as orderly, useful members of the uni-
verse.

Only as he recognizes Oneness is it possible for him
to resign the exercise of the small, personal will and
let the All- Will accomplish through himself and
through every other man.

He that loseth his will shall find it one with All-Will.

And after all it is not his will he has lost, but his
beliefs about it and its use. He has come up higher
and caught a glimpse of the unity of things. He has
hitched his wagon to omnipotence and behold all things
are done according to his word.

The All- Will backs the individual in anything good,
bad or indifferent, which he wills to do ; just so long as
the individual does not interfere with other individuals.
So you see, in any effort you may make toward self-
development you have All-Will working with and
through you. And if you will attend strictly to busi-
ness nothing on earth or in hell can stem the tide of
your will, and so defeat you.

"There is no chance, no destiny, no fate,
Can circumvent or hinder or control,
The firm resolve of a determined soul."

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XVI.
Concerning Vibrations.

Vibration is Life. Vibration is motion. All motion
is vibration. All motion is Life. You expand your
chest with an inhalation of air; you contract your
muscles and exhale. This is vibration. Your heart
"beats." This/ too, is vibration.

Every tiny cell in your body is "beating," or vibrat-
ing, just as your heart and lungs do. When your chest
expands you take in fresh air, which goes not only into
your lungs, but into all parts of your body. The air
blows like a fresh breeze around the countless millions
of cells which go to make up your body. These little
cells in their turn expand and take in the air. Then
the cells contract and force out the air, and your lungs,
too, contract, and force the air clear out of your
body.

Now this air which is thus vibrated through your
body serves to clean it. The decaying particles of your
body cells are thrown off and carried out in the streams
of air which are vibrated through your body. If it
were not for this vibration of your body, which keeps

125

the air flowing through, your body would soon become
clogged with dead matter.

The nerves and arteries in your body are constantly
contracting and expanding, contracting and expand-
ing, to move along the blood, which carries food
supply to the cells and bears away their sewage in
just the same way that the air is carried to and
from the cells.

It is by constantly vibrating — contracting and ex-
panding— that your stomach and bowels digest food.

It is by vibration of the cells of tree and plant that
the sap flows through and feeds the tree.

Even a stone is composed of tiny cells which breathe,
just as the cells of your body, and just as your body as
a whole does.

Every individual, be it cell, plant, animal or man,
lives by vibrating; by expanding and contracting to
take in the new and force out the old matter. Every
mind, too, lives by vibrating — by alternately expanding
to receive new ideas and contracting to get rid of the
old.

Then there is another sort of vibration by which one
individual communicates with another. Imagine to
yourself that the ether is made up of infinitely small
elastic balls. If you strike any one of those tiny balls
it will strike those next to it and rebound, and those

126

hit will strike the next, and so on the blow will travel
from one tiny ball to the next, clear to the edge of
creation — if you can imagine such a place. The blow
you strike sets all the little elastic balls to vibrating,
or moving back and forth.

Now if I stand away out in space and I feel the
little elastic balls vibrate against me I know it means
Something. By experience I learn what each kind of
movement means. If you clap your hands together
the vibrations of those tiny elastic balls strike my ear
and I say, "I hear some one clapping hands." If I
face your way the vibrations strike my eyes and I
say, "I see some one clapping hands." In any case
your motion caused the ether to vibrate and I felt
the vibrations. If I had no ears or eyes I could
not feel the vibrations, but they would be there just
the same.

Every movement made sets the ether to vibrating to
its particular pitch; and wherever there are eyes or
ears the vibrations are recorded. When you talk it sets
the ether going just the same whether there are ears to
hear or not.

And when you keep perfectly quiet and think you set
the ether going, too. Your brain sets vibrations going,
just as your tongue does. There are people who can
hear thoughts, just as you hear another's speech. In

127

due time we shall all hear thoughts — we are all grow-
ing mental ears.

Thoughts are higher vibrations than spoken words;
and they "carry" farther. You know a deep, growly
bass voice makes a great noise when you are close to it,
but a shrill treble call can be heard much farther than
the growly bass. The high voice makes short, sharp,
far-reaching vibrations. Now thoughts make infinitely
shorter, sharper and farther-reaching vibrations than
the voice can ; and thought vibrations carry farther and
far more quickly.

And wherever there is another thinker ready to hear,
the thoughts are recorded.

Many times we hear the thoughts of other people and
mistake them for our own; for everybody has at least
a little mental hearing.

When you speak clearly and distinctly your voice
carries much farther than if you speak hurriedly and
carelessly; and other people can more readily under-
stand what you say. If you mumble your thoughts or
your words the etheric vibrations carry mumbled mean-
ings.

As people learn to think distinctly their thoughts
carry farther and find more listeners. In course of
time and with due practice, we shall easily think so that
people on the other side of the earth can hear us. Not

128

only that, but we shall think so clearly and high that
the inhabitants of Mars and Venus and the sun, too,
shall easily hear us.

I shouldn't wonder if what we call sun rays are
really the thought vibrations of the sun's inhabitants.
What if we receive and respond to their thoughts and
think them our own!

129

According to the original Christian teaching (as I
understand it), all undesirable conditions and circum-
stances are constituted by illusions that are held by
ignorant, immature minds, and that project on to the
bodily or material plane what may be compared to shad-
ows. "If thine eye be single" — that is, if thy view he
true, if thy understanding of life be sound, — "thy whole
body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy
whole body shall be full of darkness." Undesirable
experiences are the darkness wherein a person walks
and works and stumbles about, whose notion of the uni-
verse, instead of shedding light on the meaning of life,
casts on it a shadow. They are the effects produced on
the field of our senses, by mistaken thought on the main
issues of life, by a misunderstanding of life, by believ-
ing, and therefore practicing, a lie. The stuff they are
woven of is something like the unsubstantial kind of
stuff that makes up nightmares. They are the sort of
thing from which Truth, thoroughly known, can set
people free.

Bruce Wallace.

130

XVII.
The I Was and the I Am.

Some one has said that "an honest man is the noblest
work of God." Ten thousand thousand others have re-
peated his little speech- — with a solemn wag of the head
and sidewise squinting which conveyed the opinion that
God is chary of his noble works.

Then there came another man who paraphrased that.
"An honest God is the noblest work of man," he said.
And a thousand or so of us wondered why we hadn't
thought to say that! Why, of course. And the other
thousands of thousands lifted up their hands and cried,
"Blasphemy — stone him, stone him — put him out of
the church, where the bogies '11 get him !" They put
him out. But the bogies have n't got him. And many
of the thousands are taking up his cry — "An honest
God is the noblest work of man."

Why not? An honest God is of greater value than
many honest men, is he not? God is the creator of
man; unless God is himself honest his honest man is
but an accident, instead of an image and likeness of
himself.

131

But, according to the paraphrase^ man creates his
God. Well, that is a paraphrase only, and true only
in a sense.

God is. Man's creation of God is simply his mental
concept of God; it is God as he sees him, or it, from
his viewpoint. An honest God is the concept of a man
whose soul recognizes honesty and loves it. A God of
power is the mental creation of him whose soul recog-
nizes and loves power. A God of love is the mental
creation of him who recognizes and loves love. A God
of vengeance is the mental concept of him who loves
vengeance.

Perhaps you think your mental concept of God is
not so very important, since it is all in your mind and
the real God is what he is regardless of your idea of
him. But it matters vitally to you. It is not God as
he really is, that is creating you; but God as he ap-
pears to you. Your concept of God is creating you in
its own image and likeness. If you think of God as a
great man on a throne, with a long white beard and an
eye-for-an-eye-and-a-tooth-for-a-tooth expression, you
may depend upon being made over into a sour-visaged
decrepit old man who will want to die and get away
from it all.

If you think of God as a God of power, love, wisdom,
beneficence, you will aim to be perfect as he is perfect.

132

If you happen to be one of the fools who has said in
his heart there is no God, your life will be a crazy
patchwork and your end that of the stoic who defies
earth to do its worst by him; which it probably will,
being a willing earth and ready to give each according
to his demands.

You are being created in the image and likeness of
the Lord your God, the God enthroned in your heart.
What kind of a God is in your heart ? Is he small and
revengeful and capricious, a sort of policeman to tell
your troubles to, to receive consolation from, and by
whom to send punishment to your enemies ?

Or is your God the Principle and Substance behind
all creation, the power, wisdom, love, of all creation,
a God who loves all, is just to all, generous to all, favors
none?

But no matter how lofty a God you carry in your
heart he will do you little good unless he is an I Am
God.

Most men's Gods are I Was Gods. They believe God
did wonderful things for the children of Israel; that
he performed great miracles for the apostles and dis-
ciples of Jesus; but to this age they think of him as
merely the I Was God, who stands aloof and lets man
run things — man and the devil, or "malicious animal
magnetism."

133

Believers in the I Was God are also great sticklers
for the I Shall Be God, who is coming again to judge
the wicked and set up his kingdom on earth. And
these believers in the I Shall Be God think that their
only business in life is to wait around until the great
I Shall Be makes his appearance.

People who worship the I Was and the I Shall Be
are never demonstrators. Between admiration of the
I Was and anticipation of the I Shall Be they fall to
the ground and — wait for the I Shall Be in themselves
and others.

Only the I Am God does things. I Am love impels
you to love now. I Am wisdom inspires you to act
upon your ideas. I Am power performs miracles, not
yesterday or to-morrow, but now. I Am God is the
God who works to-day, in you and in me. His ways
are not the ways of the I Was God, nor of the I Shall
Be God ; they are the ways of the I Am — new, different,
the ways of to-day, not of yesterday or to-morrow.

I know a dear woman who worships the I Was and
the I Shall Be. She entertained Schlatter the healer,
and was firmly convinced that he was a literal reincar-
nation of Jesus Christ. She took Schlatter's word for
it. She also accepted his excuses for not immediately
setting up a literal kingdom here on earth, as described
in the book of Eevelations. He told her he had other

134

work to do just now, that he was going away, but would
soon return and establish a literal kingdom. She swal-
lowed it all — without a single chew. Schlatter went
away, and later a body was found in the mountains
which was said to be his.

Since Schlatter's disappearance, some years ago, this
lady has spent her time in writing about him and look-
ing for his return. The I Was and the I Shall Be
absorb her entire spiritual attention.

In the meantime she lives in a small mining town
where in the life surging about her she sees no God.
Not long ago she wrote me to help her speak the Word
of freedom for a man on trial for his life. She said
he was absolutely innocent and that a "terrible con-
spiracy" existed against him. The man was condemned
to die, still protesting, not innocence but self-defense.
It was a case of mix-up with two men and a woman,
followed by a drunken brawl and the usual plea of
"did n't mean to."

This lady's sympathies were all with the man, and
her letters to me were pitiful. Her heart was wrung
with agony for him and his bereaved wife, and con-
vulsed with horror and impotent rage at the "wicked-
ness" of the "wretches who falsely swore away his life."
The way "evil" triumphed over justice was awful, she
said, and she knew when Schlatter returned justice

135

would be done and the wicked wretches annihilated —
or words to that effect.

Yon see, she has no conception of an I Am God, who
rales now. She sits in judgment on men's acts and
prays to Schlatter to come back and set things right.
She remembers that the I Was put 10,000 to flight with
Gideon's three hundred pitchers and candles — simply
sneaked up and scared them into a panic. She knows
the I Was hardened the heart of Pharaoh to lie repeat-
edly to the Israelites. She knows the devil had to ask
permission of God before he tempted Job. She knows
God said "I make peace and I create evil/' and that
"The Lord hath made all things himself; yea, even
the wicked for the day of evil." She knows that
"Whatsoever the. Lord pleased that did he in heaven,
and in earth, in the seas, and all the deep places." She
knows all these things of the Great I Was. But that
the I Am works now in the hearts of men ; that God now
hardens one heart to perjury and another to truth, one
to murder and another to lay down his life that his
friend may live; — that God now works in these appar-
ently antagonistic ways and thereby works out perfect
justice, wisdom, love, has never entered her mind. She
cannot imagine that no man meets any form of death
until he himself has ripened for that particular form of
death. She has read that eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel,

136

where God explains that every man dies for his own
sins, not for the false swearings of another. But the
great I Was said that, and the I Shall Be says it; but
the I Am is absent — so she thinks.

Somewhere in the Old Testament — in Psalms, I
think — the statement is made that those who die are
"taken away from the evil to come." I opine that this
is literally and unvaryingly true, that death never
comes except as the dying one needed relief from worse
things than death, things which lay straight ahead in
his path. The man of whom this friend wrote me de-
served his death; if not for the specific act for which
he was tried, then for other thoughts and acts which
preceded that. The man was on the wrong road — a
road of many and increasing evils. Death took him off
the road at the right time, and gave him a better start
in some other state of existence.

I must either believe this or deny the I Am God's
power, wisdom or omnipresence. I must accept God's
wisdom, power, love and presence on faith; or my own
judgment on sight. As I know from experience that
appearances are deceitful, and that my personal judg-
ment must perforce be based almost entirely upon ap-
pearances, I prefer to hold fast my faith in the pres-
ence, power, wisdom and love of the God over all.
Therefore I deny that this man suffered an untimely

137

death for the vindictiveness and perjury of others; I
believe he died as a result of a mental constitution and
tendencies which are hidden from me, but not from
the I Am. I believe it was the spirit of the I Am mov-
ing upon the face of his soul-deeps and saying, "Let
there be light," which gave him his experiences and his
particular form of death. And I believe his soul goes
marching on to greater light — freed from the burdens
of wrong habits of mind and body which were con-
tracted in the old life of ignorance.

Oh, yes, it is easy to believe thus of one I never saw.
It is not quite so easy to apply the same principle in
the lives of those near and dear to me, and in my own
life. But I aim to do it, even in the smallest details
of living; and I am daily growing in the ability to
acknowledge the I Am God in all my ways. I know
this is the only way to live the new thought.

138

XVIII.
Immortal Thought.

I Am of every being is God, the only power, wisdom,
will, mind; the only actor in all action; the only crea-
tor, disintegrator and recreator. The I Am of you is
One, the Only One.

The I Am or ego or spiritual being of yon is a
thinker. All thinking is done by the one thinker —
mortal thinking or immortal thinking.

Your body is an organization within you, the real
you, the I Am, the thinker, — an organization within
you of the thoughts you (the I Am or God) are think-
ing. Your body is the present conclusion of all the
thoughts, good, bad or indifferent, true or untrue, mor-
tal or immortal, which you have thought, unthought or
rethought from the beginning of eternity; and hourly
it is being changed by the new thoughts coming to you.
The real you does the thinking, recording conclusions
in the body — which, mind you, is not you; nor does
it even "contain" you; you are omnipresent, omnipo-
tent, omniscient spirit or mind, and your body is within

139

you. In you (God) it lives and moves and has its
being, and by you (God) it is held together.

You have all-power to think all kinds of thoughts;
and you use that power. You know you do — you know
you think good thoughts, bad ones, mortal ones and
immortal ones. Why question it ? You think all kinds
of thought. But that does not make you all kinds of
a being. You are the One Being to whom all kinds of
thinking are possible, just as you are a being to whom
all sorts of acts are possible.

In their essence, thought and action are one. Are
you a human being when you play on the piano and an
animal when you sweep the floor? Are you a human
being when you walk and a fish when you go swim-
ming? Of course not. You are the One Being what-
ever you choose to do or think — you are God-being. One
time you think mortal thoughts and the next time you
think immortal thoughts (results always recording in
your body) but always you are the same God-being.

And j^ou feel all sorts of ways; but always you are
you — the same One, God-being.

Your mortal thoughts are your thoughts of mortal-
ity— of death and all that leads to death — of sin, sick-
ness, unhappiness, all that tends to discourage you
from wanting to keep on living and thinking. Your
immortal thoughts are your thoughts of life, activitj^,

140

love, joy — all those thoughts which make you want to
live more. One thought differs from another but you
go on forever, the same One God-being.

Your mystification all comes from confounding
yourself with your thoughts; from thinking of your
thought-built body as you — which it is not.

In its deepest analysis your body and all your
thoughts are purely mortal thoughts, and only your real
you, the thinker, is immortal. To be immortal is to be
subject to no change — which is true of Life Principle
only. To be mortal is to be subject to change and
death— which is true of all thought, even thoughts of
life, love, joy. All thoughts are fleeting and therefore
"mortal" applies to them. Evil disappears before good
thought, and "Good doth change to better, best."

The body is eternally changing — eternally receiving
from the Self or spirit higher thought and eternally
sloughing off lower thought. Body is mortal and will
never be anything else. It will never cease to change;
it will never cease to receive new thought and slough off
back-number thought ; it will never cease to "die daily."
If it could for one hour cease this daily, hourly dying,
this casting off thought which is out of date, it would
die altogether.

Individual hanging on to dead thought is the cause
of all old age and somatic death. The body instead of

141

throwing off its dead and dying thought through its
eliminative system, allows it to continue piling up in
the body until death of the entire body comes as a relief.
And the God-self goes on to new incarnations.

All bodily energy is the energy of live thought.
Death comes to the body when dead thought prepon-
derates. "Except ye become as a little child/' whose
daily dying is perfect, you shall continue to grow old
and die the somatic death. A child hangs on to noth-
ing. Every new thing charms it completely from the
old, and its intense mental and physical activities keep
the old moving out and off to make room for more of
the new. Can you give any reason under the sun why
human beings should not continue to live the child life
and escape death of the body as a whole ? There is no
reason to be found in science, logic or nature; the one
reason lies in our artificial living. We stuff the mind
with unused knowledge; we stuff the body with twice
to ten times the food we need (all food is thought,
too) ; we glory in "owning" more things than we can
possibly need or use; we spend our time straddling our
possessions to keep others from using them; is it any
wonder we become literally loaded down until our
bodies are too cumbersome for any life more strenuous
than that of the grave ? Life to us is too real, too
earnest; we want too much; and as long as we persist
in living at this dying rate the grave will be our goal.

142

I said that in its last analysis all thought is mortal
thought. This is true of formed thought, or thoughts.
Thought substance is eternal; thought substance is
"matter/' without beginning or end; and matter in its
original state is mind or spirit — the One Thinker and
his thought material, one and indivisible. Thought
substance is immortal, unchanging; but all forms of
this thought substance are mortal, ever changing.
Think of the ocean — the water is ever the same, but
the waves, the forms assumed by the water, eternally
change; so with thought substance and thought forms.
The body being an organization of thought forms, of
"mortal thoughts/' must "die daily" ; but that thought
substance from which all its forms are made is immor-
tal mind — is the God-self. Your body is simply a
series or growing organization of fleeting eddies in your
immortal God-self.

Too wonderful to grasp? Well, never mind — better

not grasp it too tightly anyway — it might prove only

another weight on your mind! Let the thought come

and go in your consciousness, as waves come and go on

the ocean ; by and by you will "realize" that it is true —

that you and the Father, body and soul, are all One

and eternal.. Just take it for granted, dearie, and love

and be radiantly happy. So shall you use mortality to

prove immortality.

143

I have said that the soul is not more than the body.
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's

self is,
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks

to his own funeral drest in his shroud,
And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the

pick of the earth,
And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod

confounds the learning of all times,
And there is no trade or employment but the young

man following it may become a hero,
And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for

the wheeVd universe,
And I say to any man or woman, Let your soul stand

cool and composed before a million universes.
And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about

God.
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace

aibout God and about death.)
I hear and behold God in every object yet understand

God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful

than myself.

— Walt Whitman.

144

XIX.
God in Person.

God is not a person ; he is all persons.

"The Universe is One Stupendous Whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the Soul/'

This means that "Nature," which includes man, is
the body of God ; and God's body is to him what your
body is to you — a statement of beliefs which is eternally
changing as experience teaches you more.

The only body God has is your body and mine; the
only brains he has are your brains and mine; the only
experience he has is your experience and mine; the
only judgment he has is your judgment and mine.

The only way God has of proving anything is through
your experience and mine.

You have heard it said that you cannot teach a man
anything he does not already know; that to educate a
man is to draw out into consciousness that which is
already within him. By his own experience and by the
teaching of others he becomes conscious of the wis-
dom which was all the time within him. All knowl-
edge is latent in God (the Whole) just as it is in you;

145

and God becomes conscious of what he knows by the
same processes by which you become conscious. Your
real self is God.

Watch yourself and you will see how God does things.

God is Wisdom. But Wisdom and knowledge are
not identical. Knowledge is Wisdom proved — by the
only proof, experience. All Wisdom is latent in God's
soul, which is your soul and mine. God's Wisdom is
expressed in his body, or "statement of beliefs," which
is your body and mine.

God Tcnows everything; but he knows that lie knows
only what he has proved through you and me, and all
mankind and animalkind and vegetablekind.

"Some call it evolution; others call it God"

If God knew more he would not suffer through us.
This is equivalent to saying if you and I knew more we
would not suffer. There is no you and I; there is only
God.

Evolution is simply God coming into consciousness
of himself and his wisdom. Your body is a part of God's
body; your soul is God, the One Life of all creation.

Do you wish to make his people suffer ? Of course
not. Do you wish to make yourself suffer? Of
course you don't. You are God, and you don't in-
tentionally make anybody suffer unless you think you
have to. The rest of the suffering you have not yet

146

learned to avoid. In other words, God has not yet
learned how to avoid it.

But evolution still evolutes, and sighing and sorrow
are already fleeing before the dawn of Wisdom coming
to itself. God is learning how to enjoy himself in the
flesh — in your flesh and mine.

What is flesh? It is mind. God is learning to enjoy
himself in his own mind, which is your flesh and mine.
He keeps on thinking through you and me until his
"statements of belief," his flesh body, bring only joy
to all creation and uncreation.

Why did he make the ten commandments? Why
do you lay down laws unto yourself? Because you
catch glimpses of higher things than you have yet ex-
perienced, and you lay down laws which you mean to
live up to.

But you don't always live up to those laws, do you?
Why? Because your body is an organization of intel-
ligent cells each of which has a will of its own. You
catch a glimpse of the truth that Love is the Greatest
Thing in the World; you lay down a commandment:
"Thou shalt not be impatient or angry." Before a day
has passed you catch yourself breaking your command-
ment— "you forgot." In other words, the most intel-
ligent cells in }rour body recognized a beautiful truth
and promulgated a new commandment for all the cells

147

to live by. But the less intelligent cells being still un-
convinced of that beautiful truth, and being in a great
majority, you did their will — you got mad.

Now God recognized through Moses most beautiful
truths, and laid down laws to govern those who were
as yet not intelligent enough to recognize the truths
for themselves. For thousands of years God tried
through these laws to make all the people see these
truths. Thus his people evoluted — a little.

The God in Jesus caught a glimpse of still higher
truth and laid down another law, that ye love one an-
other. And still, after 2,000 years of that law, the
people do not all see it, and very few of them obey.

A Moses or a Jesus recognizes truth so much greater
than can be sensed by the common run of people, that
it takes thousands of years of reiteration of that truth
to make even a majority of the common run of people
see it. It takes centuries of evolution really to convert
the world to an Ideal conceived by a Jesus.

It takes you years of reiteration of your Ideal, and
constant effort toward living up to it, before you can
really convert your body to that Ideal.

In other words, God glimpses in Moses or Jesus a
beautiful Ideal of himself; but it takes Him thousands
and thousands of years to work out that Ideal, to evolute
all people to the stage of wisdom and loving-kindness.

148

It is God's effort to work out his Ideals, ivhioh causes
all suffering. This means that it is your effort to work
out your Ideals, which causes all your suffering.

An Ideal impels change; the Established Order, in
the Whole or a Part, resents and resists change; hence
the pain. The spirit is willing but the flesh is estab-
lished and refuses to change.

It was this Jesus had in mind when he said, "Resist
not evil/' The Established Order, the flesh, resists
change because it is too shortsighted to see that the
change is good. Because we are not yet convinced that
All is Good and every change tends to greater good,
we fight the change, more or less whole heartedly. We
have within us the same high Ideals, the same back-
slidings and wars, revolutions and evolutions, the same
joys and sorrows, that the children of Israel had, that
the universe at large has had and is having. All his-
tory is the history of your own thoughts. Man is an
infinite little cosmos.

Just as in history ignorance has warred against the
Ideal and yet in the fullness of time the Ideal has had
its way ; so in yourself ignorance wars against the Ideal
and may for a time seem to win, but eventually
the Ideal has its way. A man in his ignorance
may yield to "temptation" but the results will take
away the very temptation itself. When a child's

149

fingers are well scorched it loses all desire to play
with the fire.

There is no such thing as "ruining our lives forever/'
Every soul has all eternity in which to learn to live.
Every soul is God — omnipresent, omniscient, or omnip-
otent in potentiality. And all eternity is its school
term, all space its school ground. Death is simply a
promotion ceremony, peculiar to the kindergarten
classes. A "ruined" life is no more than a "ruined"
problem on Tommy's slate — it is wiped off to give
Tommy, who has been learning by his mistakes, a chance
to do a better sum.

Be still and know that God and you are one, and all
things shall be made plain.

150

XX.
How to Reach Heaven.

The subjective or emotional self is the best of serv-
ants but the worst of masters.

All the evil in the world results from transposing au-
thority from objective to subjective, from letting emo-
tion run away with conscience and reason.

All unpleasant reactions are due to the waste of en-
ergy which results from this transposition of authority.

The emotional or subjective self is the storehouse of
personal power; the objective self is the director of that
power. Happy results come from intelligent use of
power. To give unbridled rein to the emotional self
is like turning on the power of an automobile and then
lying back and laughing — or weeping — whilst the auto
runs its pace and kills or maims what comes in its way.
The loud, hysterical giggle betrays that emotion is run-
ning away with the directing power, and that personal
power is ebbing below the point of safety.

And the waste of power — the letting loose of more
emotion than the occasion really calls for- — is bound to
produce its after effects of depression.

151

Depression of this sort is due to depletion of emo-
tional energy, and disappears as the system recuperates
— as more energy is stored.

Nearly all "blues" are caused by such reaction; en-
ergy is wasted in mental or physical agitation due to
anger or fretting, or "righteous indignation," or excess
of sympathy, or "having a good time" ; and then we
wonder why we are so blue. We go off and have a
"good cry," which relaxes us, fall asleep after it, and
wake up without the blues — and wonder why. More
energy has been generated — that is all.

The secret of real enjoyment, of the kind from which
there is no unpleasant reaction, lies in perfect control
of the emotional nature; in so conserving your emo-
tional power that it shall never be depleted beyond a
certain definite point of poise, the point where there is
plenty in well-controlled reserve.

When one first begins to find and maintain this state
of poise he feels that he can never "have a good time"
again — that he must repress all the fun and be glum
and steady. But this is a mistaken idea, which will dis-
appear as he gains control.

There are heights and depths and breadths of fun
and joy which can never be touched except by the
poised, controlled person.

It takes emotional energy to enjoy, and the greater
152

the store of energy the deeper the enjoyment, and the
less of it is wasted in boisterous movements and noises.

One does not suppress his enjoyment of an incident;
he suppresses unnecessary expressions of his enjoyment;
and every such motion inhibited leaves him with that
much more energy on hand with which to enjoy. In
proportion as he ceases to slop his emotional power in
loud laughs and unnecessary movements he deepens his
power of enjoyment. Laughs are on the surface; real
enjoyment is in the deeps of being. It is the surface
slopping one must suppress, the waste of power, that he
may become conscious of the real depths of enjoyment.

Impulsiveness and nervousness are due to depleted
emotional energy, and are invariably caused by letting
the subjective, emotional self rule. So much energy is
wasted in unnecessary emotionalism that there is not
enough left to enjoy with — there are no depths. There
comes to be a habitual waste of emotion over the most
trivial things, and there is no reserve for the greater
things which occasionally come. All due to excessive
expression of emotion. People who have not learned
to control their expressions of emotion have never even
tasted full enjoyment.

The one cure for nervousness, impulsiveness, boister-
ous emotionalism of all sorts is to be still; cut off all
unnecessary waste and let the reservoirs fill.

153

There are two kinds of "lively dispositions." One is
the result of hysterical slopping over of energy without
regard to the fact that the reservoirs of personal power
are dangerously near the point of utter depletion. This
sort of liveliness often ends in tears, nearly always in
depression. The other sort of "lively disposition" is
the surface expression of full reservoirs. One is like
the slopping of water from a shallow bowl, by shaking
the bowl; the other is like the rippling of a clear lake
— the depths are clear, still and happy, whilst the sur-
face answers brightly and without waste, to the passing
breezes of fun. The bowl of water is exhausted by its
expressions of fun; the clear lake enjoys its ripples of
laughter without, wasting itself.

The larger the lake the larger the waves. The same
breeze which causes a pond to ripple will cause Lake
Michigan to toss in white-capped glee. The greater the
length, breadth and depth the greater the waves ; so, the
greater the personal reservoir of emotional power the
bigger the laugh of which it is capable. The loud laugh
sometimes betrays the vacant mind and reservoirs;
sometimes it betrays wide and deep and full ones; and
by its ring the hearer can tell which. Who has not
rippled in response to the musical, full, contagious loud
laugh? And cringed at the sharp, hysterical loud
laugh ?

The musical laugh, loud or soft, invariably indicates
154

well stored reservoirs of emotional power and real en-
joyment. The shrill unmusical laugh, the nervous
laugh, loud or soft, invariably means nervous or emo-
tional depletion, shallow reservoirs, and shallow enjoy-
ment or none at all. Musical and unmusical speaking
voices are other indications of these states of personal
power. Smooth, graceful, intelligent gesticulations are
yet other indications of full reservoirs; rough, jerky
unnecessary motions indicating depletion.

The curtailing of wasteful laughs and motions is one
of the most important things in life. Emotion is soul
force, that which accomplishes all the great things of
life as well as all the little things. Every human being
has access to unlimited soul force, which is constantly
flowing into him from the Universal Eeservoir. But if
he uses it as fast as it flows in — uses it in overdoing
the small and least necessary things of life, — he has no
power for the greater things every soul longs to do.
How much power would the world get from the Niagara
river if it were not for the great natural dam and re-
serve power at the falls? If you would do the great
things you must see that your energy is not wasted in
a steady stream of little things.

Every movement, every thought, uses a definite
amount of emotional energy. Every inhibition of a
movement or thought stream permits the higher rising
of your reservoir; just as every stone added to a dam

155

increases the reservoir and power behind it. There are
enough good things to do and think in this beautiful
world without dissipating our power in thoughtless
activities, such as tapping our feet or fingers, rocking
to and fro, giggling shrilly, and so on. Yes, we learn
to do things by doing them ; but do we want to do these
useless things ? Of course not. They are wasteful, un-
beautiful

And we can learn to stop them by stopping them;
and have so much deeper power with which to do the
useful, beautiful things. A half hour a day used in
simply being still, will add almost incredibly to the
depth of our reservoirs. And every time we remember
to inhibit an unnecessary rock or tap or fidget we add
another depth to our power. This is all easily proved
by a little practice.

Our energy is soul power, which is also wisdom. As
our energy deepens our wisdom deepens also, and our
sense of humor deepens. Soul power is love and wis-
dom, the One and Only Substance of which the indi-
vidual is an inlet — a small or large inlet according as
he lets the energy run out fast, or conserves it for large
uses ; according as he lets it run, or dams it for personal
use.

There is plenty of soul power for everything — yes.
But it takes time to build a dam ; and the man who lets
loose his whole Niagara Falls of emotion upon trivial

156

occasions will have to spend most of his time in patch-
ing his dam. And the man who dribbles all his power
in thoughtless and useless acts has no power behind his
Niagara.

Do yon see that self-control is the key of heaven?
And the time to use it is now, the place here. "Earth *s
crammed with heaven" waiting to be conserved to in-
dividual uses. Love, power, wisdom is flowing through
you into expression — don't let it flow too fast — don't
waste it in thoughtless, foolish expression. Cut off the
wastes; use the power in wise directions, and let the
tide rise within you. Thus shall you come to the great
things you would do, and behold within you shall be
the power to do them with joy; and there shall be no
aftermath of depression.

This is heaven — the highest heaven for the deepest
soul.

And the door is open for everybody.

$ :§: :f: sg: $ _ $

Vital energ}^ is soul energy — love-power and wisdom
mixed— L2W2.

The body is a generator of vital or soul energy.

Heaven and hell are states of bodily being. The body
full of vital or soul energy — L2W2 — experiences heaven.

The body depleted of its soul energy lives in hell —
carried there by riotous living, by wasting its vital or
soul energy.

157

/

2" know I am august,

I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be

understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize.
(I reckon I behave no prouder than the level I plant

my house by, after all.)

I exist as I am, that is enough,

If no other in the ivorld be aware I sit content,

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the larger to me, and
that is myself,

And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thou-
sand or ten million years,

I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness
I can wait.

My foothold is tenon* d and mortis' yd in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

— Walt Whitman.

158

XXI.
A Look at Heredity.

No evolutionist can overlook heredity, nor "under-
estimate it. He believes that every generation comes
in on the shoulders of its predecessors, and he fully ap-
preciates the value of good predecessors. The world's \
pride of ancestry is not so foolish as it might appear.^
The more intelligence and culture my forbears had the
greater my possibilities. There are no breaks in the
law of growth or evolution or heredity, though the cas-
ual observer often fancies there are.

Every human being comes into the world as an "acme
of things accomplished" by his ancestors, and he is an
"encloser of things to be" accomplished by himself and
his progenitors.

But who are my ancestors? Let me tell you that
Ealph Waldo Emerson and Jesus of Nazareth are more
directly my ancestors than many of those whom the
world calls my great-grandfathers. There is a spir-
itual and mental kinship through which we inherit.
There are spiritual and mental relationships to which
we all owe far more of our goodness and greatness than

159

can be traced to those of blood tie. In rare instances
only do these spiritual and mental relationships exist
within the line of blood relationship.

The world does well to be proud of its ancestry; but
it does better when it appreciates its spiritual ancestry.
Think you that the poor little waif owes a larger inher-
itance to the woman who bore it and deserted it, than to
the foster parents who nurtured it in love and wisdom ?

Our blood relations are not the only relations from
whom we inherit ; neither when we are born do we cease
to inherit. There is One Father of us all, and the oft-
repeated statement that we are all brothers and sisters
is no fanciful one. The "fatherhood of God and broth-
erhood of man" is fact; and the man who thinks he is
limited by the ignorance of his blood relations is him-
self an ignoramus. If his blood relations are not to
his liking, let him draw a new inheritance from the
world's greatest and best. They, too, are his ancestors.

And mark this : Not only does the son inherit from
his fathers of blood or spirit tie, but many a father
inherits from the son that which the son has gained
from other sources than those of blood relationship.
Inheritance by blood tie is not a stream, the outlet of
which can rise no higher than its source. It is a sort
of hydraulic ram through which life may be coaxed
to almost any height of culture and refinement.

160

I have heard it said that culture is "the soul of
knowledge— the essence of right living" inherited from
our ancestors. Where did they get it ? I will tell you
where; they got it by persistence in the same sort of
practices which are decried — by "wresting, by force,"
the knowledge, wealth and dominion of others ; by gen-
erations of "monastic seclusion," much of it enforced
by others whose turn it was to "wrest by force"; by
generations of "rigid self-control"; by hours and days
and years of prayer, which is simply a phase of "going
into the silence" ; and, yes, and even by "breathing like
a filthy, crazy Yoga" — though much of the breathing
was forced by strenuous endeavors to get away from
the raging hordes whose wealth or daughters they were
stealing. The Spirit of Evolution which is running
this universe is very cunning in devices for inducing
self-culture.

Full breathing, going into the silence, affirmations,
etc., are not new methods of self-culture. They are as
old and their practice as universal as life itself. But
heretofore their practice has been in the main compul-
sory. Humanity had to be persecuted, starved, hunted
into breathing, exercising, praying — had to be forced
to develop body, soul and wits by using them.

The present generation inherits the wisdom gained
through their efforts. Not the least of its inheritance

161

lies in its wits developed to the point of seeing that for
self-development ten minutes of voluntary deep breath-
ing is preferable to an all-day chase to save one's neck;
that a half hour of intelligent silence is worth more
than the three and four hour "wrestlings with the
Lord" such as our great-grandfather John Wesley — and
many of his inheritors — practiced regularly.

Herein lies the great difference between our ances-
tors and us: They were by conditions compelled to
self-culture; whilst we, their inheritors, are making
intelligent use of it.

Through evolution we are learning to conserve en-
ergy. Our ancestors spent all their time — perforce —
in half-unconscious physical exercise and breathings;
we spend a few minutes a day in intelligent exercise
and breathing, and conserve our forces for mental and
spiritual uses.

And without them we should be minus the intelli-
gence to do this. Humanity is a solidarity — on the
square; and without thq, work of his ancestors none
shall be made perfect.

But it is by the work of his ancestors that man stands
on to-day's pinnacle. What they learned to do by
labored effort and mainly under compulsion, we do
by instinct.

It is by man's work to-day on this pinnacle, that his
162

great-grandchildren shall be brought forth on yet
higher pinnacles, with yet higher instinctive knowledge.
Take the most cultured person you know ; trace his
ancestry and tell me where his culture began. You
cannot do it. Go clear back to William the Conqueror
if you will; thus far you may call his ancestors cul-
tured, but even so their culture, all the way back, is a
descending scale of boorishness in comparison with what
we twentieth century folk call culture. And we must
hark back of William for the beginning of his culture.
William the Conqueror was the illegitimate son of
Eobert the Devil. Did culture begin with Eobert?
And the mother of William was a miller's daughter.
Is she the mother of all culture ? Eobert the Devil was
the third earl of Normandy; which means that his
grandfather was an ordinary everyday scrub who prob-
ably murdered somebody particularly obnoxious to the
king and was rewarded with an earldom. Did he be-
queath "the soul of knowledge, the essence of right
living," to William the Conqueror and his exclusive
progeny ? If so, where did he get it ? His own grand-
father and the ancestors of the poor miller's daughter
roamed the same woods, fought the same battles, hunted
the same beasts and men, and gnawed the same
bones. Where did the ancestors of Eobert the Devil
pick up the "soul of knowledge" ? And what were the

163

miller's ancestors doing whilst Kobert's grandfathers
cornered the "essence of right living"? For I warrant
you that William's miller's-daughter-mother was less
of a stranger to the "soul of knowledge, the essence of
right living" than was that devil of a Kobert.

Yes, there are many people who are educated but
not cultured. But their progeny will brag of their
culture. For what is in one generation mere education,
or "monastic seclusion," or "rigid self-control," or "go-
ing into the silence," or "breathing like a filthy, crazy
Yoga," is by time and unconscious cerebration trans-
muted into pure "culture." And if any of us lack cul-
ture you may depend upon it our ancestors, by blood
and spirit, are numbered among those who failed to
"wrest by force" the very things decried as uncultured.

All life is education; and time transmutes education
into culture, "the soul of knowledge, the essence of
right living."

Not a human effort but is necessary to the develop-
ment of the soul of knowledge. Not a Yoga breath,
not an hour of silence, not a moment of rigid self-
control, not a day of hard labor, not a sound or move-
ment or cry of joy or sorrow or rage or despair, — not
one but has helped to free the soul of knowledge. Not
one could have been dispensed with without leaving
culture less cultured than it is.

164

The difference between education and culture is the
difference between the daily drill at the piano and the
finished musical expression of a Paderewski. Education
comes first and without it there can be no culture.
Education is the work of TODAY; whilst culture is the
soul of well used yesterdays. Why exalt the well used
yesterdays to the disparagement of today's opportu-
nities ?

Inheritance is wealth left us by sanguine and spir-
itual relations gone before. It is capital left us, to be
increased by just such "wresting by force" as some
people condemn. Who is the more valuable to the
human race: — he who parades his inheritance as he
received it or he who adds to it his own efforts at self-
culture ?

Don't be a Chinaman and kow-tow eternally to
heredity. Be an Individual and improve heredity. If
your inheritance was poor make it better; if it was
good make it better. The world's culture is only just
beginning; get busy helping it along. That is the im-
portant thing.

Do it now.

165

Idealist.

Lo, I am Skeptic! neither bind
Science nor Bible on my mind.

All things I hold in flux; the Good,
Fore-running Bream paints to my mood.

The sweet Ideal is more to me
Than any mans philosophy.

The BooTcs no man may surely know,
Science is changeful, doubtful, so,

Doubter, my faith is more than most,
My Dream of Best I give my trust.

In it I think Divinity

Speaks surest to the core of meA

By night clear fire, by day bright cloud,
Music of Sphere, soul-sweet, brain-loud,

Heart-thrilling, lures me on, the God
Floating before with smile and nod.

The best I dream, my faith tells me,
Will come to live as grows a tree,

As breaks a day, and life must hold
A fact each dream a hope can mould.

— J. William Lloyd.

166

XXII.
Critic and Criticised.

"I don't want to be criticised."

"But you want to learn, don't you? You surely are
not satisfied that you know it all."

"Oh, of course I want to learn, but I want to learn
by myself. I would rather be wrong than be criticised.
I hate to be told how to do things. I want to find out
for myself."

Solomon the Wise reasons not thus. Solomon prayed
for wisdom above all things, and in receiving wisdom
he received all else.

The man who thinks he would rather be wrong than
be criticised is for the time being a moral coward and
no Solomon. He values his "feelings" of the moment
above wisdom. He does not want wisdom and knowl-
edge above all things; he wants what wisdom and
knowledge he can gain without the sacrifice of his
feeling of self-complacency. He is complacent as
long as his friend says to him, "You are a good
fellow, a very admirable fellow"; he feels good as
long as he thinks his friend considers him wise;

167

he expands and smiles, and works away in his
own good way.

In his moments of confidence he will tell his friend
that Wisdom and Knowledge are the greatest things in
the universe; that we grow only by the acquisition of
Wisdom and Knowledge; that growth is Life, and Life
is Love or God. He will enthuse a bit and tell you
Wisdom is God, the One Desirable One; and that by
growing in wisdom man becomes conscious of his
divinity.

Just here his friend, who is a prosy, practical sort of
fellow, interrupts him. "See here, Smith/' he says,
"you are not running this branch of your business
quite right. You just ought to see how Thomson does
that sort of thing."

He gets no farther; Smith freezes instantly, and
Jones's confidences catch the vibrations. Smith is "so
sensitive, you know" — he would rather not know any-
thing about better methods, than to stand the shock of
a criticism. Jones talks about the weather a bit, and
departs.

Smith continues to think he desires wisdom above
all things.

He does n't. • He desires above all things to have his
bump of approbativeness smoothed.

He fails to know himself. And he will not learn
168

himself, because he refuses all truth which does not
make him "feel" good.

He shuts himself off from a thousand avenues by
which wisdom is trying to reach him.

It is said our enemies are our best friends. Emerson
bids us listen to them and learn of them.

Burns exclaims: —

"0 wad some power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us !
It wad frae mony a blunder free us
And foolish notion."

Our critics are answering Love's attraction to free us
from blunders and foolish notions.

Why not? Why resent a criticism ? We are all mem-
bers of "One Stupendous Whole." Why resent and
refuse another's suggestion? It is our own suggestion,
drawn by our own affirmed love for wisdom and knowl-
edge.

We don't understand ourselves; we don't trust our
surroundings. We say we want wisdom above all
things ; we want to understand. In our heart of hearts
we do love wisdom above all things; therefore we at-
tract it through all avenues.

It is our soul's love for wisdom and knowledge which
attracts to us the criticisms of friend and foe.

If we really believed that we attract what we receive;
169

that "our own" comes to us; that all things are work-
ing together to gratify our soul's desires ; — if we really
believed all this we would meet criticism in a friendly
spirit, with senses alert to find the kernel of wisdom it
is bringing us.

To resent a criticism is to re-send, to send away, a
bit of knowledge your soul has been praying for. All
because your bump of approbativeness has an abnormal
appetite for prophecies of "smooth things."

But to re-send a criticism is not to get rid of it. It
comes back to you over and over, and perhaps every
time in a little ruder form.

If you speak softly to a friend and he fails to hear,
you repeat in a louder tone; if he is very deaf you
holler, and perhaps touch his shoulder to gain his at-
tention.

All creation is alive, and pursues the same tactics.
When you resent, re-send, a criticism, Creation sends
it back at you a little more emphatically. If you still
resent it Creation puts still more force into repeated
sendings. She keeps this up, in answer to your own
semi-conscious desire for wisdom and knowledge, until
by some hook or crook you take the kernel of knowl-
edge contained in that criticism. Then Creation smiles
and lets you alone — on that line.

The way to avoid Creation's kicks is to accept her
170

hints as they come to you in the form of friendly criti-
cism or suggestion.

Not all criticisms are true in their entirety, but every
one contains somewhere a suggestion by which you
may profit — by which you may grow in wisdom and
knowledge.

Don't let that one little bump of approbativeness
make you re-send that knowledge — and bring down
Creation's kicks to drive it home.

But don't get the idea that that little round nub of
approbation is "bad." He is not. He is a good and use-
ful member of your family, and deserves to be well
fed and cared for and respected.

But feed him so well on your own good opinions that
he will not sulk and kick if he does n't receive unlim-
ited taffy from others. Get away up high in your own
opinion. Know yourself a god, unique, indispensable
to Creation. You have powers and wisdom and knowl-
edge not possessed by anybody else in the world. No-
body who ever lived or ever will is any better or any
more of a god than you are.

Neither is anybody less good or less of a god than
you. We are different — that is all. Every man has
his individual goodnesses and his peculiar point of view
— no better than yours, but different.

It takes every man in the world to see all sides of
anything, or anybody.

171

Every individual who is at all wise wants to see all
sides of things. The only chance he has of doing this
is to look at things from other people's points of view,
as well as his own; to put himself in other people's
places; to see as others see; to vibrate with the other
fellow — who sees another side of the same thing.

Listen to your critic. See yourself as he sees you.
He is your best friend, drawn in answer to your soul's
cry for more wisdom and knowledge. Be friends with
him. Hush the clamor of approbativeness with your
own high affirmations of your goodness and worth —
hush the clamor and listen. The spirit in you will
separate the chaff from the wheat of the criticism; a
smiling little "Poof!" will blow away the chaff; and
your soul will expand and increase in stature by assim-
ilating the wheat.

172

XXIII.
The Nobility.

We always come in contact with the people we live
and think up to. If you are not satisfied with present
environment it can be changed by making your very best
of it, and in the meantime fitting yourself mentally,
physically and in deportment, for the sort of people you
want. Get ready for 'em.

And see you waste no energy in impatience over
having to wait a long time.

It takes mental and physical culture and gracious
deportment to fit you for the sort of friends you
want.

There is no place in life which does not offer plenty
of advantages for the cultivation of all these things, but
especially for the cultivation of a gracious deportment.
You may depend that if you can be lovely and gracious
to "common people," who may ruffle your feathers the
wrong way, you will be at home if a duchess happens
along. Duchesses, you know, belong to the class of
people who make a study and lifelong practice of being
lovely and gracious. I am talking about real duchesses

173

now — not the kind that get rich quick and marry a
title without having the real qualifications of nobility.

Somebody has said that the world is divided into two
classes, the civil and the uncivil. The hall-mark of
real nobility is the habit of being civil to the uncivil.
No better place to acquire this gentle art than living
among the uncivil. The youth who finds himself
among the uncivil and who proceeds to cultivate up-
pishness and contempt for his associates; who "looks
down" on those with whom he is compelled to associate ;
who tries to be "superior" and to impress others with
his superiority, — such an one is forever fixing himself
in the class of the uncivil — where duchesses don't grow.

You are what you are. (Time spent in trying to
"impress" people is worse than wasted.) Be your gra-
cious self, and honor not only your father and your
mother but your next door neighbor and your next door
neighbor's kitchen maid if you want to develop the
qualities that will fit you for the sort of associates you
want — members of the really truly nobility.

Cultivate your brains, dearie; cultivate your body;
cultivate your soul ; all to the best of your ability. But
above all and in all and through all cultivate the mental
and physical deportment of the truly noble. Belong
always to the civil class and practice civility eternally
upon the uncivil as well as upon the civil.

174

When a brawling enemy followed Pericles home one
dark night, with intent to injure him, Pericles sent his
own servant with a lantern to light the man home
again. Pericles did not descend from his own class to
pay his uncivil enemy in his own coin.

Go thou and cultivate Pericles and thine own high
self. Then shall all desirable associates seek you, in-
stead of you having to seek them.

Greater credit belongs to him who sees the real nobil-
ity through the housemaid's dress and manner, than
to him who recognizes it in silk and velvet voice.

We are all members of the nobility, all descended
through Adam and Eve, who never saw silk nor made
salaams. All are sons and daughters of the Most High.

Don't be fooled into contempt and incivility by our
masquerade costumes; and don't value some of our
gowns above ourselves — or yourself.

175

L* Envoi.

When earth's last picture is painted,

And the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colors have faded,

And the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest — and, faith, we shall need it —

Lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen

Shall set us to work anew.

And those that were good shall be happy —

They shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a tenAeague canvas

With brushes of comet's hair.
They shall find real saints to draw from —

Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting,

And never get tired at all.

And only the Master shall praise us,

And only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money,

And no one shall work for fame;
But each for the joy of the working,

And each in his separate star,
Shall draw the thing as he sees it,

For the God of things as they are.

— Rudyard Kipling.

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